


Craving the Sky

by najio



Category: RWBY
Genre: (the A+ parenting in question), (they don't all have nightvision), Alternate Universe, And Then Some, Angst, Anti-Faunus Racism (RWBY), Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Faunus Weiss Schnee, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Jacques Schnee's A+ Parenting, Multi, Salem who???, Self-Acceptance, Trans Female Character, Trans Yang Xiao Long, Weiss Schnee Needs a Hug, eventually, intent to remove faunus trait, internalized prejudice, no fall of beacon, some liberties taken with how faunus biology works
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:33:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 49,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28015515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/najio/pseuds/najio
Summary: If it weren't for her grandfather, Weiss would have lost her wings at birth. If it weren't for her mother, she would have lost them as a toddler, when she was still too young to remember them. If it weren't for her sister, she would have lost them as a child, the moment she was old enough to be afraid of them.Weiss arrives at Beacon still counting down the days to her eighteenth birthday, when she will finally get rid of them for good. It's the obvious next step. Until, that is, her team does what they do best, and makes everything a whole lot more complicated.
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna/Weiss Schnee/Yang Xiao Long, Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long, Weiss Schnee/Yang Xiao Long
Comments: 561
Kudos: 589





	1. Engel

**Author's Note:**

> Well, would you look at this? Maybe my motivation to write isn't dead after all!
> 
> So! Housekeeping. I have no schedule planned for this whatsoever, it's just gonna happen when it happens because the world is crazy and I am tired. It's also only planned out in the vaguest and broadest of strokes. Tags may appear. Tags may even disappear, who knows. How long will it be? Your guess is honestly as good as mine.
> 
> Also, Error 404: Salem not found. Please do not refresh the page and try again, the people of Remnant would really much prefer if she stayed gone. (Basically, gods and Salem are cool and all but that's not what this story is about, so I'm ignoring them. Grimm still exist, and the White Fang is still around, but there's no evil conspiracy where they're working together. In the words of our Lord and Savior Nora Valkyrie: "Nothing bad ever happened. EVER.")

It was a little past two in the morning, and Nicholas was still awake. The manor was quiet. This was a very, very bad sign.

Thirteen hours ago, his daughter had gone into labor with her second child. Two hours ago, he'd heard someone sprint past the door to his room. He'd called after them, but there had been no response. Fifteen minutes ago, his nurse had told him gently but firmly that it was late, and he ought to be sleeping. When asked about the labor, he had mustered up an empty smile and assured Nicholas that everything was fine.

Everything was not fine.

"Bestefar!"

Nicholas heard the pattering of small feet racing down the hallway. That was all the warning he got before his granddaughter dashed into his room and dove onto his bed, burrowing her face into the blankets. He reached out to rub her back with a trembling hand. "What is it, darling?" he rasped. "What's wrong?"

"Daddy's angry," she mumbled, without lifting her head.

"What? Why?"

Winter shook her head.

"Did something happen to the baby?"

Another, more vigorous shake.

"Is that a no, or—"

"I don't know!" She sat up and rubbed her eyes, scowling as she sniffled. Even at age six, Winter already hated to cry.

"Alright." He looked up and nodded to his nurse. "Be a good man and bring me my chair, would you?"

The man paled. "I can't—"

"You will," Nicholas said. He didn't—couldn't—raise his voice, but _something_ had happened to his daughter or his grandchild, and he would accept no argument. The nurse helped him into his wheelchair, and together the three of them made their way to the master bedroom, where Willow had chosen to have her baby.

The shouting could be heard from half a hallway away—but it wasn't until they were almost at the door that any words could be made out, mixed as it was with a baby's wail.

"—telling me not to believe my own eyes, is that it?"

"Jacques!" Nicholas tried to shout, but his lungs were not what they were before his time in the mines took its toll—his son-in-law didn't even hear him over his own rant.

"I know damn well that you're lying to me—"

_"Stop it!"_

The room fell instantly into a stunned silence—except for the hiccuping cry of the infant. Winter stood in the center of it, her hands clamped over her ears and her eyes squeezed shut.

"Thank you, my dear," Nicholas said. His own voice was barely more than a whisper, but his nurse had finally recovered. He leaned forward to hear over the crying, and repeated the words loud enough for Willow and Jacques. "Now. What is the matter."

No one spoke. Jacques' lip curled, and he extended his arms in answer. The baby lay there, still wailing, its tiny fists waving indignantly. Then he turned it, revealing its back... and what Nicholas thought for a baffling instant were a pair of extra arms. But they weren't, quite. He recognized the shape an instant later. They were wings, covered in fine down that looked more like fur than feathers, but unmistakable nonetheless.

"Ah. Well, that _is_ a relief."

Jacques' face contorted, and went an unhealthy shade of red. "A _relief."_

"My grandchild is healthy," he pointed out. "If I judge by that impressive racket."

"She may be your grandchild," snarled Jacques, "but I'm sure you've noticed by now that she is _not my daughter."_

...Ah. That would be the other shoe, then.

"Here," Nicholas said, opening his arms. Jacques deposited the baby girl into them, and he adjusted her so that she could lie against his chest. The screaming quieted somewhat, and into the sudden quiet he let out a wheezy sigh.

"She is," Willow insisted. She was still in bed, her hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, her eyes red-rimmed and welling with tears. "I know, I _know_ how it looks pappa, but I _swear_ she's his!"

"She _does_ have some of your look about her, Jacques." Her eyes were that same sharp, icy blue. He gave the baby's nose a gentle boop with his pinky, and smiled when she wrinkled it the same way Winter had as an infant. "Hello, Engel," he whispered, and for a moment she stopped crying to stare at him.

Then she flailed her arms so wildly that she nearly punched him in the face, and began loudly protesting against the shouting, her birth, and the world in general. Nicholas laughed so hard that he started to cough and wheeze. "I believe you, my dear," he told Willow, when he'd gotten some of his breath back. "But there are ways of testing that, are there not?"

"They are not reliable," Jacques said stiffly. "And it is a fact that humans do not give birth to... faunus."

"Have not and do not are two very different things," Nicholas pointed out. "And I believe you are missing something obvious, my lad."

_"What."_

"Who else would the father be? I would think you'd have noticed a man with full-sized wings hanging about."

Willow's eyes widened. Clearly, she hadn't considered that. "You're right! I've never even met a bird faunus before."  
  


"So you say," Jacques said flatly. "And I suppose I shall have to swallow it."

Nicholas narrowed his eyes. "If you cannot get past this, that is ultimately up to you."  
  


"Give her to me."  
  


He hesitated, suddenly uncertain. But if Jacques was going to accept this little girl as his daughter, he needed to see himself in her. Hold her, care for her. Love her. So he nodded to the nurse, who helped him hand the baby back to her father.

Jacques looked down at the baby's tiny, fuzzy wings. Then he turned on his heel, and left the room. "Where are you going?" Nicholas said, a little more sharply than he'd intended.

"For a walk. I need time to think."

The baby's cries, which had died down a bit once everyone around her calmed down, started fresh. Then the door closed, and the sound faded away.

"Are you alright, darling?" Nicholas asked. He got a weary nod from his daughter, and Winter grabbed his hand and squeezed it. "Good. That's good." He was tired, now. All the way down to his bones. His eyes started to drift closed.

"Perhaps I should take you to your room?" suggested the nurse.

  
"Not yet." Nicholas yawned. "I'll nap where I am. I want to be here when he comes back."

But it wasn't Jacques that came back. Instead, the door burst open as a butler who would barely have come up to a younger Nicholas' navel charged in without so much as a knock. "I beg your pardon!" Nicholas said indignantly.

"Terribly sorry sir, madam, but I just saw an airship landing. I went to speak to the crew, and they told me the man on board is a Doctor Arthur Watts."

"What?" Willow tried to sit up, and winced. "Now? Why on Remnant would we need another doctor when she's perfectly healthy?" Then she paled. "Is he trying to do the paternity test already?"

"No..." Nicholas felt something cold in the pit of his stomach. "He hardly seemed to want one at all, let alone right now." What else could they need a doctor for, with only a healthy newborn to consider? A healthy newborn with a pair of tiny wings that everyone on Remnant would see as a sign that she was not, in fact, her father's daughter. "Sabyr's _fangs!"_

Willow couldn't walk to follow them. In the end the nurse half-led, half carried her, while the butler—whose named turned out to be Klein—pushed Nicholas' chair. Winter hurried along behind them, loudly wondering what was going on and why everyone was panicking. They didn't answer her. If they were wrong, there was no need to frighten her. If they were right... that wasn't something to tell a child.

They found Jacques in a room with an unfamiliar man holding a briefcase. The baby was in her father's arms, screaming up a storm. "What do you think you're doing?" Nicholas wanted to bellow, but a hoarse whisper was the best his voice could do without breaking. His nurse repeated it in halting, fearful tones.

Jacques straightened to his full height and glared down at Nicholas. "I am correcting the problem."

"The sooner it's done, the easier it will be," the doctor chipped in. "The base, here—" he prodded the place where a wing emerged from her back, and she wailed even louder in protest. "It will only get larger as more muscle develops. Harder to deal with without scarring."

Nicholas felt sick. "That is your _daughter,_ Jacques."

"That's not how the world will see it." He raised an eyebrow. "How do you think she'll fare, trying to claim her inheritance when everyone in Atlas thinks she's illegitimate?"

He scowled. As hateful a sentiment as it was, it wasn't wrong—the law had changed considerably since the Great War, but some scraps of the old ways remained. A child born out of wedlock could only inherit if there were no trueborn siblings to take priority. Not being human would only make it harder.

"And after that? Do you think the world will be kind to a faunus bastard?" Jacques set his jaw. "If she is my daughter, as you claim, clearly _these_ are a mistake. She won't miss them. There's no reason she should even know they were there. She'll live a far happier life that way."

"That is not your choice." The nurse stammered over the words, and Nicholas waved him away in disgust. Unprompted, Winter clambered up into his lap and bent close to listen.

"Am I her father or not?" Jacques snapped. "If she's mine, it is my choice."

_"No."_ Winter's voice rang out clear and strong. He had no idea how much she understood what was happening, but there was a fierce set to her jaw that made him nearly burst with pride. He hadn't even spoken, yet.

"You can explain this to her when she's older," Nicholas said, through his granddaughter. "But you will _not_ touch those wings until she turns eighteen. I won't allow it."

"I am allowing her into my family." Jacques' lip curled. "I am giving her an opportunity any of those creatures in Mantle would kill for, and I will _not_ become a laughing stock for it!"

"We can hide them." Willow's voice was soft, but determined. "Until she's old enough. This—we can't take it back once it's done, Jacques. I don't want her growing up to regret something we did."

For a moment, Nicholas thought Jacques was going to shout. A vein pulsed in his forehead, his hands tightened on the baby in his arms—but he could see that he was outvoted. "I will reach out to you again when it's time," he told Doctor Watts stiffly. "Thank you for coming on such short notice."

Watts raised an eyebrow, then bowed and left the room. Jacques shoved the baby girl into Willow's hands and stormed out.

Mother and daughter cried in unison. Nicholas reached out to lay a hand on Willow's shoulder. "He'll come around," he promised, though saying it made him uneasy. He'd never seen Jacques act that way before. Anyone would react badly to thinking their wife had just had a child by cheating on them, but... even so.

He changed the subject. "What do you think you'll name her?"  
  


Willow looked down, as if startled to realize she was holding her baby. "I..." The infant's cries tapered off, now that the worst of the excitement was over. She reached out and grabbed one of her mother's fingers.

This time, at least, the tears welling in Willow's eyes were happy ones. "Weiss," she decided. "I think it suits her. If... if he likes it."  
  


Jacques made no objections. He nodded shortly when asked about his youngest daughter's name, and then retreated to his office. For once, he didn't so much as glance at the SDC's stocks. Bird faunus were rare—it shouldn't take long to get a list of every single one of them who'd been in Atlas in the past year.

* * *

When Nicholas passed a year and a half later, Doctor Watts was once again called to the Schnee manor. This time, it was Willow who put her foot down. She had her doubts—wasn't it cruel to raise Weiss as a faunus and a bastard, when she wasn't really either? Wouldn't it be harder on her, to get rid of the wings later in life once she'd already gotten used to them? And, though she tried not to think it, wouldn't Jacques feel better without the reminder? Wouldn't that help him see that she'd never strayed?

But there was no getting around it—they'd promised pappa. So they gave Klein, who already knew the whole truth, the task of looking after the baby. They wrapped the fledgling wings in fabric that bound them tight against her back, so that she could be out in public. And as soon as she learned to talk, they made sure to impress on her how important it was that she didn't talk about her secret.

* * *

Two years later, Willow's desperation to prove her faithfulness and Jacques' wish for another heir— _just in case—_ culminated with the birth of Whitley. He was checked over, thoroughly, but there were no wings. No ears or tail. He was entirely human. Whatever infidelity or stray quirk of genetics had been responsible for Weiss, it never repeated itself.

He was not told that there was anything different about his sister. Of course, a four year old is only so good at keeping secrets. He saw her wings almost a dozen times, the last when he was about three and a half. All he took of those memories into his teenage years were strange fragments of a dream, of Weiss standing in a rain of feathers. These, he ignored.

* * *

When Weiss was ten, Willow gave up. Jacques never said it—he would never say it—but she could tell he didn't love her anymore. How could he? The paternity tests kept coming back inconclusive. Every medical textbook she flipped through said the same thing. Two humans will always have a human child. Maybe it would have been easier to confess. Maybe then they could move on and heal. But she could never quite bring herself to lie to him.

It was the reminder. That constant reminder that kept the wound between them festering. And wasn't it better? Wasn't it easier? Weiss hated having her wings tied down. She complained constantly of cramps, and they were starting to shed feathers that gave her nasty rashes all over her back. How needlessly cruel, to subject a child to that.

"You would be perfectly safe," her father explained to her, three days after her birthday. "Doctor Marigold is very good at what he does. Once it's over, you'll be just like your brother and sister. Wouldn't you like that?"  
  


"Um..." Weiss fidgeted. Willow could tell her wings were bothering her by the way she stood, her back slightly arched to take the pressure off them. "I guess so."  
  


"You guess?"

She quailed under Jacques' glare.

"Do you know what will happen, if you don't get rid of those things? You'll be a faunus bastard in the eyes of the law. You won't get any inheritance, not from me and not from Whitley when he takes over the company. If you're lucky, you'll find someplace decent in Mantle to scrape by. Atlas won't want you."  
  


"Jacques!"

"Am I supposed to lie to her?" he demanded. "I've been doing that for ten years. The longer we wait, the more visible the scars will be."

Weiss hunched her shoulders. "Will it hurt?"

"No," Willow promised her. "It won't hurt a bit. You'll be asleep the whole time, and Doctor Marigold—"

The door slammed open. Winter strode through it, with a practice saber in her hand and fire in her eyes. "Stop."

"What do you think you're doing?" Jacques hissed. "Get out of here, _now!"_

Weiss hugged her arms around her stomach. "Winter? What's going on?"

"You promised grandfather."

Willow winced. "Winter, I know it's not what we agreed on, but things have changed—"

"No."

"Go to your room," Jacques insisted. "We'll speak about this _at length,_ later."

"No!"

"Winter—!"

"I'll tell them," Winter blurted. Her hand clenched around the hilt of the saber until her knuckles went white. "If you do this, I'll tell _everyone._ Nothing happens until she turns eighteen, so she can decide. That's what grandfather wanted."

Jacques stared at her. "You wouldn't _dare."_

"Watch me."

"And what happens to your sister, when you tell the world what she is?" he demanded. Willow suppressed a shiver at the way he said it, _what she is,_ and Weiss started to cry.

"I don't want to live in Mantle," she insisted. "Don't make me!"

Winter set her jaw. "It'll hurt you more than it hurts her. And it'll hurt her less than what you're about to do."

Willow tried to reason with her. Jacques ranted and raged. Weiss tugged on her sleeve and begged her not to tell anyone. Through it all, Winter stood ramrod straight and did not give an inch.

There was nothing to be done. She could only be grounded for so long—if she decided to talk, word would get out. Doctor Marigold was sent on his way without ever learning why he was summoned, and life in the Schnee household went on.


	2. Little Black Bow

Weiss hated heights.

It wasn't that she was afraid of them because she might fall, or even because she might hit the ground and break her neck. What scared her was how easy they were, how natural it felt to walk on the edge of a precipice without so much as putting her arms out for balance. Even after seventeen years, she still hadn't managed to convince herself there was any danger in a sheer cliff.

That was what it was, really. The way her mind and her gut never matched when she was staring down a drop. That urge to flare her wings. She hated that.

So, naturally, she gravitated towards them wherever she went. And when she was angry, like tonight, she would find the tallest place she could and just sit, dangling her feet in open air. The roofs of the dorms weren't even all that high, really. She'd briefly considered the CCT tower before deciding she might actually get herself hurt doing that.

Weiss couldn't fly. She probably wouldn't have been able to even if her wings were healthy, which after over a decade of binding them down at least eight hours a day, they weren't. They were only a painful nuisance, one she'd have to put up with until she turned eighteen. She knew that. She _knew_ that. The animal part of her could shout all it wanted. _She_ was in control.

Right. So in control she'd gotten into a shouting match with Blake. And now her team would probably never speak to her again, and she'd have to leave Beacon. Because of how much _control_ she had.

* * *

Weiss shouldn't have said anything. She'd known that, even when she looked around and saw the scuffle several tables away. Four boys surrounding a faunus girl. Laughing. Pulling her ears. Her sitting there with hunched shoulders, asking politely for them to stop.

"We should do something," Ruby said. She shifted so that she was halfway out of her seat, her head turned towards the commotion, ready to move. The others were talking, and the words blurred together. Weiss got the gist of it. _Oh, the poor thing. How could they? Let's go save her._

She should ignore it. Speaking up would only risk giving something away. But she hated it, hated hearing them fret over something so _avoidable._ All that pity for someone who chose to flaunt those ears, and couldn't live with the consequences.

"Why?" she asked. "It's her own fault she's such a target."

Stunned silence fell. Ren gripped the edge of the table until his knuckles went white. Jaune's can of soda slipped out of his hand and landed in his lap. His yelp was drowned out by the scrape of a chair as Blake lurched to her feet and said, _"What."_

"This wouldn't happen if she would just hide them."

"Oh, come on!" Yang burst out. "That's like hearing somebody got murdered downtown and saying oh, well, if he hadn't gone out he would've been fine!"

  
"It'd be _way_ easier for them to just not be a bunch of jerks," Nora agreed. "They wouldn't have to do anything."

Weiss rolled her eyes. "Well, I'm sure that would be _nice,_ but that's not the world we live in, is it? Everyone has to accept reality at some point. It's like walking around in a desert with no protection from the sun, and then complaining when you get burned! Better to just buy a hat."

"Maybe she doesn't want a hat!" Blake slammed her shaking hands palm-down on the dining room table. People started to turn and stare. "Maybe she wants to be able to live her life without hiding like a coward!"

"Well, maybe she should consider that the rest of us might not want to see that."

"Maybe _you_ should consider keeping your disgusting opinions to yourself!"

"How dare—"

_"Stop it!"_

Ruby's voice was sharper than it had ever been before, even though there was a slight sheen in her eyes that might have been tears. Her shoulders slumped. "You can do whatever you want," she mumbled at Weiss. "I'm helping."

Without another word, she turned on her heel and strode towards the faunus girl and her tormentors. Blake stood there for a moment, flushed and trembling with rage. Beside her, Yang reached out and took her hand, squeezing once before she followed her sister. Blake went with her, leaving Weiss alone at the table with a stunned team JNPR.

Not for long, though.

"I'm breaking his legs," Nora decided. Ren went with her, hopefully to stop her before she got herself and most of their teams expelled. Jaune was right behind them, though he didn't look enthusiastic about picking a fight with Cardin. Pyrrha was the last to leave the table. She paused just long enough to meet Weiss' eyes and say, "It's our duty to protect everyone. Not to pick and choose who deserves help."

And then, Weiss was alone.

* * *

After that, there wasn't much point staying where she was. So Weiss wandered up to the dorm roof, as if drawn by some magnetic force. Except that she knew it was nothing physical. It was that hated part of herself. Her animal instinct.

Her wings were still cramping. She curled her knees against her chest and clenched her fists while she waited it out. Eventually the twitching subsided, leaving only tingling and numbness near the tips of her wings. Sometimes she felt it in her nose and fingertips, too, when she was struggling to catch her breath through the bindings. That was normal, especially now that she was at Beacon and couldn't leave them uncovered at night. They ached constantly, as if to remind her of everything she had to lose.

Weiss would have killed to be able to hide what she was with a hat.

She would turn eighteen in just over nine months, right around the end of the school year. Just about three quarters of a year before she could _finally_ get rid of them. It would have been sooner, if Winter hadn't insisted on doing what Grandfather had wanted. If she hadn't been willing to hold Weiss' future hostage in the process. What did she know, anyway? What did either of them know? They never had to drag all this dead weight around.

_"You change, once you leave,"_ Winter had said. _"In ways you can't imagine until it happens. Just get out of here and think about it, before you make a permanent decision. That's all I ask."_

Think about it. Weiss scoffed and kicked a nearby pebble off the roof. Because there was so much to _think_ about. Did she want to get rid of all visible evidence that she wasn't human, so she might have half a chance at challenging Whitley's claim and taking back the family name once Father was gone? Or did she want to show the world that she was some freak of nature, have everyone make the obvious assumption that she was a bastard, lose any hope of claiming her inheritance or taking back the company, and probably end up in a Dust mine somewhere? Such a difficult decision. How could her tiny adolescent brain possibly be expected to handle it?

She didn't talk to Winter anymore.

If she was relieved that the sound of footsteps pulled her out of her thoughts, she wasn't going to show it. "Go away, Ruby."  
  


The footsteps stopped. The silence stretched. Then her partner walked the rest of the way to the edge of the rooftop and sat down beside her.

"Y'know... sometimes you make it really hard to want to keep trying with you."

"It's a talent."

"You have to apologize."

She bristled. That made her wings cramp again, and the pain put something sharp into her voice as she snapped, "For what? Telling the truth no one wanted to hear?"  
  


Ruby glared at her. Before today, Weiss wouldn't have believed she was capable of putting that much heat into it. "Stop doing that."

"What?"

"Pretending you're dumb. Or we're dumb. Whichever. We know it would be easier for Velvet if she hid her ears, that's the whole point! She shouldn't have to."

That... wasn't the direction Weiss had expected this to go.

"Did you really mean that stuff?" Ruby asked, when she didn't respond. "About not wanting to see them?"

Weiss should lie. The less attention brought to this, the better. She should tell Ruby what she wanted to hear, but... "Yes."

"Why not, though?" Ruby hugged her arms around herself. "I just... I'm trying to understand you and I just can't."

"It's gross, that's all. Seeing people flaunt them."

Ruby made a helpless, pained noise. "You know that's horrible, don't you?"

"It is," Weiss agreed. Watching all those ears and tails sticking out, tall and proud and unbroken in the open air, was a horrible, horrible thing. She just wasn't sure why.

"You have to get better about that," Ruby told her. "If our team is gonna work, I mean. Blake's really upset. You're my partner and I want to help you, but..."

Weiss laughed. It was an ugly, bitter thing, which was appropriate. Apparently even hope incarnate was getting sick of her. "I'll apologize," she said dully, when she was done. Because she'd gotten enough of it out of her system to start lying again.

* * *

"I would like to apologize," Weiss said, into the strained silence of the dorm. It came out smooth, because she had practiced—over and over, until she could say the words without it sounding like they were being extracted with pliers.

Apologies were the human equivalent of baring your throat to submit to an opponent. Weiss hated them, and after years of practice she was still no good at pretending otherwise.

"Seriously?" demanded Yang. She was sitting on Blake's bed. Next to Blake, actually, with their hands linked. A wonderful show of solidarity Weiss could no longer expect from Ruby.

"Yes."

"That's _it?"_

_What more do you want?_ she wanted to shout, but stopped herself. "Cardin is scum," she said instead, because at the very least she was fairly sure they could all agree on that.

"And you're a—"

Blake squeezed her hand, and she cut herself off. "You don't seem very sorry to me."

"We disagree. I won't bring it up again." Shouldn't have brought it up in the first place. _They're beneath your notice, Weiss. Gawking draws attention._

"Not good enough." Blake took a deep breath. "I can't work with you if you keep acting like this. But I don't want to leave Beacon, either, so..." She glanced at Yang, who smiled encouragingly back at her. "I'm a faunus."

Weiss' thoughts came to a screeching halt.

"I told Yang earlier, and... I'm trusting you, Ruby. She said you'd back me up on this."

"Definitely!" Ruby didn't miss a beat.

"I'm not going to sit there in silence while you talk like that. I'm not going to let you treat me, or Velvet, or _anyone_ that way. Either you can learn to deal with that, or... not." Blake clung to Yang's hand, not nearly hard enough to hide her shaking.

"I need to think."

Weiss didn't even decide to say it. A familiar cold feeling settled over her, putting a pane of glass between her and the world, and she let her body take over. It spoke automatically. It turned on her heel and strode into the bathroom. The door shut and locked behind her.

Her hands clasped the edge of the sink until the crackling in her ears subsided. She did and did not want to look up. She knew it would hurt and wanted it to, relished the feeling of raising her eyes and glaring into them. Her thumb brushed over her scar.

It was just about the only thing she still liked seeing in the mirror.

She shrugged off her jacket and shirt. Then the bindings, layers and layers of straps and velcro and stiff fabric that would take ages to do up again. They pooled at her feet on the tile floor. All that was left was her undershirt—backless, so that she could finally turn and look at the things on her back.

When she was born, her mother had told her once, they were covered in fuzzy down. These days, they were more or less bald. Stray feathers poked out here and there. Most had long since been rubbed away by the bindings, or fallen out due to poor circulation. They were warped, gnarled things, full of joints that didn't bend anymore and skin she couldn't feel because the nerves were dead.

She wondered what Blake's trait was. Probably ears. That bow was suspicious, and she doubted there was room for a tail in those leggings.

Without support, the joints in her wings started to ache. She bent to grab the wrappings, much too late. The cramp drove her to her knees. She clutched at the place where they joined with her back, squeezing and twisting and hating, hating, hating Velvet and Winter and Blake most of all, for that little black bow she could slip on and off as she pleased.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blake: I'm a faunus  
> Weiss: *internet dialup noises*


	3. Poison

Weiss didn't shout at Blake after her little revelation. She didn't apologize to her, either. Didn't mention it at all. In fact, she barely spoke to her teammates, except for Ruby.

She had nothing diplomatic to say—and now that the sisters had obviously sided with Blake, that meant it was best not to say anything at all. Keeping her mouth shut wasn't exactly her strong suit, but the only other option was going back to Atlas. She... didn't want that. Even now, she liked it better at Beacon, where people who hated her thought she was human.

So she sat through classes, through meals, through long hours studying in their dorm with her eyes pointed at her homework and her mind full of static. Her grades started to slip. It opened up a pit in her stomach, the same one that stirred there when she caught herself drifting towards rooftops, or picked up a scent on the wind that came from miles away. The one that reminded her she was marked by more than wings.

_I see that I overestimated you when I put you on your sister's curriculum._

She wasn't stupid. She wasn't.

_I will adjust it for your... needs._

"Weiss."

A hand touched her shoulder. She startled so badly she knocked over her chair, bracing herself with her back to her desk as her wings tried to flare. The resulting cramp made her hiss in a breath as she whirled to face... Yang?

"What do you think you're _doing?"_ she snapped.

For the first time she could remember, Yang didn't snap back. She just stared, her hand still partly raised, her brow furrowed. "I just wanted to ask if you know where Ruby is."

"Oh." Weiss tried to relax, but her heart wouldn't stop hammering against her rib cage. "She left a while ago. Something about a team leader meeting with Jaune."

"Weiss..." A flicker of frustration passed across Yang's face, then melted away as she sighed. "When was the last time you ate?" The non-sequitur made her frown.

"This morning."

Yang pinched the bridge of her nose. "It's six, Weiss."

"I'm not hungry. Now would you go away? I need to focus."

Yang went. Weiss wasn't surprised—until twenty minutes later, when she came back. There was a plastic-wrapped sandwich in her hands that she set down in front of Weiss, so that it was covering up her textbook.

"Eat," she said, plopping down on her bed. "Then study."

  
It was impossible to ignore the food now that it was right in front of her, so close that the smell was overpowering. She had to squash the impulse to tear into it like some kind of animal, and instead took slow, deliberate bites. When she was finished, Yang was still there, lying on her stomach and playing some game on her scroll. Weiss realized with a sudden strange, twisting feeling in the pit of her stomach that she was waiting to make sure she ate.

"What is this?"

Yang glanced up. "Huh?"

She gestured at the crumbs and crumpled up plastic.

Yang shrugged. "Force of habit, I guess."

"But... why?"

At first it seemed like she was so absorbed in her game she hadn't even heard—but then she shut it off, and got to her feet, and came over to collect the bit of plastic. "I don't like you," she said bluntly. "But I'm still not gonna let you starve yourself, because you're a person, and that's not how I treat people. Even the ones I don't like."

Weiss suddenly wished she hadn't eaten the sandwich. It made an uncomfortable weight in the pit of her stomach.

Yang left. Weiss gave up on Grimm Studies and made a few token attempts at her history essay, but even with the distraction gone, she still couldn't focus. Her nose itched. A lock of hair had fallen out of her ponytail. Her wings ached.

She almost didn't notice when the door opened—it was that quiet. Which meant that Weiss knew exactly who she would see if she turned around. So, she didn't. She bent her head towards her desk and scratched out one tortured word after another, all the while fighting the urge to...

Her eyes flicked to the right. Just enough to get a glimpse of Blake sitting cross-legged in bed with a book in her hand, and the little black bow on her head.

Weiss had been doing that a lot, lately. Sneaking glances. Sometimes it was because she was trying to gauge how good the disguise was. Was there some exact wrong angle, where it became obvious? Could you tell from just Blake, if you ignored the bow? Was there something in her eyes or the way she stood that gave her away? Other times, like now, she honestly had no idea what she wanted. It was just like the feeling that drew her to rooftops and ledges. The pull of some inner magnet she couldn't ignore.

Once she started, she could never stop. The third time, she glanced over and nearly jumped when she met Blake's eyes. Weiss hastily looked away, but it was much too late for that.

"You keep doing that."

Weiss stared at her essay as if it could tell her how to respond.

"You want to look at them, don't you?"

And, oh. Blake was right. She did want to see. There had never been anyone like—any faunus in the house, because Father was worried she might learn bad habits. The closest she'd ever been to someone else's animal part was when Velvet had sat across the cafeteria. And, of course, all the times she'd stood right next to Blake without knowing.

When Weiss didn't speak, Blake shifted so that she was facing her directly. "I don't get it."

"What?"  
  


"This. _You._ It doesn't add up." Blake studied at her as if she was trying to find a seam. "I've had humans say awful things to me before. A lot. I've just never met anyone who will say all those things and then respect my boundaries. I know you want to, but you've never asked. It doesn't make sense."

Another reason to hate Blake Belladonna—she was terrifyingly perceptive.

  
"I don't want to look at them," Weiss insisted.

"Maybe you don't. Maybe you want me to hide them." Blake's eyes narrowed. "Most humans don't, though. They hate thinking they might be around faunus and not know. Or they assume they can always tell, somehow."

"Well, I obviously couldn't," Weiss said stiffly. "You're doing an excellent job of fooling everyone. Congratulations."

"You _are_ angry about that."

Weiss turned her back on Blake. Clearly, she couldn't trust herself to hide her expression. _Always so volatile—_

"Do you even realize how hypocritical that is? You were just telling me that Velvet shouldn't be open about being a faunus."

"I've changed my mind," she snapped. "I've decided it's much more irritating when you pop up out of nowhere without even—" She had to cut herself off.

"Without what?"

"Nothing."

"It must be bad if even you won't say it."

Weiss scowled at her. "It's _irritating,"_ she said acidly. "That's all. You just, what, tie a bow in your hair and suddenly you can go around like you're human? It should be... harder."

"You think it isn't?"

She could feel her heartbeat in her fists. "I know it isn't. You can slip it on and off, just like that."

"I can, but that doesn't mean it's easy. Do you have any idea how scared I was when they matched us all up? I barely knew any of you. It's a miracle I landed with even one person willing to back me up, let alone two." Blake stood and started to pace. "But I didn't know that. I had to tell three people I met a few weeks ago something that might have made them hate me, or even hurt me."  
  
"You didn't _have_ to," Weiss shot back.

"Yes, I _did!"_ Blake stopped in her tracks in the middle of the room and whirled around. "It feels like dying, Weiss. Like you're strangling a part of yourself every time you hear someone call you an animal without even realizing it. And then they look at you, and they expect you to laugh along." Her eyes were unfocused, now, like she was looking at something or someone far away. "I know you think they're just words, but... when you hear this stuff over and over again, it gets under your skin. You start taking all that poison inside yourself. Eventually, they don't even need to tell you those things anymore, because you're already saying them to yourself."

Weiss gripped the back of her chair until it creaked.

"You're angry again," Blake said, sounding resigned more than anything. "I won't let you do that to me, so you get angry."

"No," Weiss gritted out.

"What? You're not angry?"

"Yes, I'm angry!" she snarled. "No, it's not because you don't hate yourself! Not everything is _about_ you!"

"...Are you trying to say you're not angry at me?

"No. Yes. No!" Weiss scowled. "Just shut up and let me do my stupid essay!"

She clung to those sheets of paper like a life preserver. If she buried her head in her books, she wouldn't have to notice that Blake was still looking at her.

The ears, she was forced to admit, had never been what she hated about Blake. She hated her knowing stare, her perfect bow, the way she talked that jabbed at places Weiss thought went numb a long time ago. But more than anything, she hated the way her voice had wobbled as she talked about something that made Weiss' insides burn.

She couldn't read the books anymore. The words were too blurry. So she got up and grabbed a change of clothes, and paused with the bathroom door halfway open. She wasn't good the way the sisters were—she knew that. But Blake was a person and there was something she needed to be told, and no one else around to say it.

"I'm sorry," she told the empty bathroom in front of her. She caught the sound of a page tearing slightly.

"...What?"

"It's—It sounds like a horrible feeling. That's all." Weiss ducked into the shower before her teammate could respond.

Blake must have told the others, because the team dynamic changed. There was a little less tension in the air. Ruby got some of her pep back, which forced her to accept that yes, she'd missed it. Yang started bringing her food whenever she got caught up in studying. When she brought back tuna once and Weiss refused to touch it, she remembered every time after that. She didn't ask why, which was a relief even though Weiss was prepared to lie and say she was allergic.

It felt nice. Stable. She could handle this. All she had to do was avoid upsetting things again, and she could get through the last few months before she turned eighteen. It finally felt like the end was in sight.

She really should have learned to be suspicious of feelings like that, by now.


	4. Snow Angel

Weiss didn't get lost.

No. That wasn't quite it. She _couldn't_ get lost. Her sense of direction was uncanny that way. Inhuman. The rest of team RWBY... not so much.

The only thing more frustrating than wandering around Vale with no idea which way to go? Wandering around Vale knowing exactly which way the airfield was, and watching Ruby take every wrong turn under the sun.

"We've already gone this way," Weiss gritted out.

"No, we haven't!" Ruby insisted. "See? I would've remembered that store! Look at those _pistons!_ Can we—"

"No," chorused Yang, Blake, and Weiss, in perfect unison. They'd come out here to greet the students arriving from Haven for the Vytal Festival, and had decided to do a bit of shopping in Vale when they got there early. Somewhere between their third bookstore and fifth weapons shop, they'd realized their scrolls had lost service. Something to do with the network being down for maintenance. Whatever had happened, it meant they couldn't use the gps function to get back. So, they wandered. And wandered. _And wandered._

Weiss glanced over her shoulder. If it weren't for several dozen blocks of buildings in the way, she would have been staring directly at the spot where the Haven students were supposed to land. But, of course, she couldn't _say_ that. Telling them what she was seeing would be tantamount to admitting what she was.

Not that she would have been able to explain it, anyway. She'd thought it was a persistent hallucination for years, until the night she'd watched the aurora with Klein and Whitley, and all of a sudden they could see it too. Except that she didn't have to wait for it to be dark and cloudless at just the right time. Wherever she looked, faint blue ribbons traced through the air, flowing from north to south. Directions just... stuck with her, like dropping a compass into the pit of her stomach whose needle pointed _my room,_ or _Beacon,_ or _how to get out of this hellishly disorganized excuse for a city._ This was the second time Weiss had ever been "lost," and she was not enjoying the experience.

Initiation had been just as frustrating—eventually she'd given up on waiting for Ruby to find the temple, and had pretended to hear someone shouting in the right direction. But Blake definitely wouldn't buy the idea that Weiss had heard something she hadn't.

"Let's just ask for directions," Blake suggested, for the fifth time.

"Ask who?" Ruby wanted to know. "I haven't seen anybody in like ten minutes. Oh, wait, there's someone!" She pointed at a hooded figure walking in the opposite direction from them, shoulders hunched so that the person's face was completely hidden in shadow.

"Ruby, no," Weiss said.

"Why not?" Yang started walking purposefully towards the single sketchiest person Weiss had ever seen in her life.

"Because I don't want to be _murdered?"_

"Hi!" Ruby waved. "Do you—hey, wait!"

The figure ducked down an alleyway at a dead sprint.

Yang took off after them. "Hang on! We just want to know where we are!"

Weiss followed—because what _else_ was she supposed to do?—and the four of them dashed around a corner to find that the hooded figure was no longer alone. There was a boy running alongside them, struggling to cover his face with his hand despite the fact that his electric blue hair would be instantly recognizable at a glance.

He and the hooded figure swerved into yet another alleyway—only for both of them to yelp and turn right back around, pelting in the opposite direction as fast as their legs would carry them.

A girl about Ruby's age poked her head out of the alley. "Salutations!" she greeted them cheerfully. "Are you going to run away too?"

"Uh," said Yang, "is there a reason we should—"

"Pfft, nah. What's your name? I'm Ruby!"

"My name is Penny. It's a pleasure to meet you!"

Blake gave her name, and stuck out her hand to shake for several seconds before dropping it sheepishly to her side. Yang shrugged and gave Penny a friendly grin as she introduced herself.

"Uh, Weiss?"

None of her teammates even blinked at Penny's odd introduction. Why would they? They couldn't see the way she twisted the blue lines around herself, as if her body was exerting the most powerful magnetic pull Weiss had ever seen. Was it a semblance? Pyrrha's messed with the lines a bit, but not like _this!_

"Weiss?"

And why did she smell so _weird?!_ There wasn't a trace of sweat. Even Father's expensive cologne couldn't hide that scent completely. Every human had it. Every faunus.

"Remnant to Weiss?"

Penny smelled blank. Almost like plastic, with a hint of... copper, maybe? Was that _blood?_ No, hang on, even a little blood would smell stronger than that... Weiss caught herself blinking rapidly, half-expecting that would dispel the illusion.

Blake's brow furrowed. "Well, that's Weiss. Being... quiet?"

"Are you alright?" Penny wondered. "You appear to be in some pain." Her head tilted slightly to one side. "Are you sure you haven't obstructed your blood flow?"

Weiss' stomach dropped. "I'm _perfectly fine,"_ she snarled, "aside from all the artificial smells in the city."

They stared at each other. Penny blushed green, which... sure. Why not. "Yes! You're perfectly— _hic!—_ fine. I was just— _hic!_ —checking up on all of you!" She turned to Blake. "Have you ever experienced sharp pain in your back or shoulders?"

"...No?"

"Excellent! And how are your shins?"

Yang looked as baffled as the rest of them, but she couldn't resist an opportunity like that. "I think we can all agree, a solid eleven out of ten."

Blake put a hand to her forehead. "Did I pass out? Is that what this is?"

"Just roll with it," Ruby suggested. "Hey, Penny, do you know which way the airfield is? We wanna try to meet up with the students from Haven."

"That's easy! Just head down that street and go left, right, straight, rightrightleftrightleftstraitleft—"

The others stared at Penny in helpless confusion. Weiss supposed this counted as a good enough cover story. "That was very helpful," she lied, and _finally_ started walking in the right direction.

Not fast enough. "Do you want to come with us?" Ruby asked.

_Ruby, no!_

"That would be sensational!"

_Ruby, why?!_

"Lead the way, friend!" And, well, that was that. Penny gasped, and Weiss could practically see stars in her eyes. She wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Penny did at least take them exactly where they wanted to go, which meant that Weiss didn't have to pretend to have understood her instructions. Of course, by the time they actually _got_ there, the Haven students were already gone. Some were probably getting settled in on campus, while others explored Vale. Team RWBY trudged back to Beacon, thoroughly demoralized, and Weiss had almost managed to relax after the whole fiasco when she caught a flash of violent blue out of the corner of her eye.

She whirled around and spotted him immediately. He was definitely the same boy they'd encountered in the city—his hair might as well have been a neon sign. He heard the clicking of her heels and turned, a disarming grin on his face. "Hey there, snow angel."

With Jaune, she'd been composed enough to turn her shock into contempt. Now, fresh from Penny seeing right through her in an instant for reasons still unknown, it shook her to her core. "Why does _everyone_ keep calling me that?" she snapped, stumbling over the words and looking anywhere but the boy in front of her.

"Aw, man, someone beat me to it?"

"Uh, Nep?" The guy behind him elbowed him in the side. He was looking from Weiss, to Penny, to the rest of team RWBY, his tail twitching anxiously behind him. Because of _course_ the hooded figure had a tail, and of _course_ it had been completely invisible the moment he bothered trying to hide it.

Blue hair blinked. Then his eyes widened, and he took a nervous step back. "Crap! I mean, uh... hello, people we've never met before! I'm Neptune, that's Sun—"

Ruby introduced the rest of them, but Weiss refused to be distracted. "What in _Remnant_ were you miscreants doing?"

Sun put his hands on his hips. "We could ask you guys the same question."

"We were lost," said Yang. "Not that much to it. What was with the cape, though?"

"Uh." His tail curled behind his back. "Sightseeing's always better when it's more dramatic?"

"Uh- _huh,"_ Weiss drawled.

"Okay, okay, you got me. I took a boat here a couple weeks ago, and I wasn't reallysupposed to do that."

"So, what, you're in hiding for getting here early?" Weiss was unimpressed. "Did you happen to pay for a ticket, by any chance?"

"Weiss," Blake hissed.

But Sun rubbed the back of his neck and said, "Well, I sort of overslept. The boat was already about to leave when I got there, and nobody was watching the gate, so..."

"So then you decided to go into hiding in the most conspicuous disguise I've ever seen? Is that the logic here?"

"Well, uh..." He shifted from foot to foot, his tail twitching uncomfortably. "Not exactly. I mean, it's not like stowaways are the cops' number one priority. But since I can't stay in the dorms, and I can't spring for a nice hotel, I've been around the docks a lot. That area is... kind of a lot."

Neptune frowned. "Wait, what?"

"I'm fine!" Sun said hurriedly. "Just, uh, apparently the Fang have been really active in Vale the last few weeks."

"There hasn't been anything like that on the news!" Weiss' palms prickled with sweat. Would Father call? No, not if it was only in Vale. But if activity was picking up in Vale, it might do the same in Mantle, and then she'd definitely hear about it. "Active how? What are they doing?"

Sun shrugged. "I only know what people were yelling at me."

"They did _what?"_ blurted Blake and Neptune, at almost the same time.

"Uh."

"We're talking about this later," Neptune said, poking his friend in the chest. "Seriously, dude, you've gotta tell me when people are shitty to you so we don't keep going to the same places."

"Like I have to tell you anything to get you to avoid the _docks."_

Neptune turned pink. "That is not the point!"

They said their goodbyes before the boys could devolve completely into bickering. Penny had to go, too. She explained (rather badly) that she wasn't staying in Beacon with the other Atlas students, for reasons unclear that probably had something to do with being a living magnet. Or, well, Weiss really wanted them to have something to do with being a living magnet. The alternative felt like too many odd coincidences for one person.

"See you around," Neptune called after them. He waved, then winked at Weiss and added, "Great meeting you, snow angel!"

She flushed and turned on her heel, so that no one would notice her grimace as her wings started to cramp.

* * *

Without any input from Weiss whatsoever, Sun and Neptune became regular additions to their group. Penny, too, though she didn't have nearly as much free time to socialize. And with them came that same name. Snow angel.

The really maddening thing was that she couldn't work out whether she hated it or not. It ached like one of her cramps, but she didn't tell him to stop. Went out of her way, in fact, to sit where she knew he'd be, just so he'd walk past her and say it again. Would cover her wince with a smile that was easy to misconstrue as encouragement.

"I don't get it," Jaune grumbled, one evening at dinner when the boys weren't present. (Apparently Sun had dragged Neptune to a noodle shop.) "How come he can say that and it comes out all suave and cool? It's the same words!"

Weiss had been wondering the same thing. Was it something about Neptune? Why hadn't Jaune been able to strike that same raw nerve?

"You can get away with a lot when somebody likes you," Yang said, shooting a teasing grin Weiss' way.

Was that it? She supposed it did feel sort of... warm. _Angel._

Jaune accepted that explanation with a shrug. That was the one good thing that had come from her argument with Blake—he hadn't tried to ask her out since. And if the why of it stung a little, that wouldn't make her ungrateful of the result. She didn't like him that way. She'd known that easily right from the start, because she'd imagined a crush would be impossible to miss.

The real thing was... underwhelming. Was this really how her mother had felt? It didn't seem worth it. But feelings changed, didn't they? Not everyone fell in love at first sight. Maybe this was how it was supposed to go. Small at first, and then you let it grow.

So she started smiling back, here and there. Letting him sit next to her in the library. Little things. He had his own little things. He winked across rooms and flashed his startlingly white grin, which made her feel a pleasant sort of invisible she couldn't have explained if she'd wanted to. Found excuses to brush hands and bump elbows, which she learned to dodge. And for a little while, she felt almost human.

Of course, something had to ruin it. The only surprise was that it wasn't her dovetailing combat record, or the shortened breath and cramps that had caused it, or even the delicate truce with her teammates. It was, of all things, a dance.

The event was set for two weeks after the last airship arrived from Vacuo, right between the end of their exams and the beginning of their final mission of the year. It was meant to be a celebration of unity between the academies. Students were encouraged to make friends with the visitors, to relax and enjoy themselves.

Weiss had honestly forgotten about it. Her blissful ignorance came to an abrupt and screeching halt three days before, halfway through a round of Remnant: the Game. Since they had ten people playing a game meant for four players, they'd all teamed up in partner pairs—except for Ren and Nora, who were watching instead. It was a terrible way to play, because they kept arguing with one another and accidentally giving away their cards, but all in all it had made for a surprisingly pleasant afternoon. Until Sun glanced at Neptune on his left, then leaned forward over the table, upsetting a few of the pieces. "So," he said. "Who's everyone taking to the dance?"

It was like he'd dropped a live bomb. Suddenly no one on team JNPR could look at each other, Neptune turned scarlet, and Ruby became utterly fascinated by her cards. Blake was the only one who seemed unfazed. "Well, Yang's making me go," she said, bumping their shoulders together with a grin. "So I guess she's my date."

Yang dropped their entire hand on the table. Face-up. "Y-yeah," she said, scrambling to scoop them out of sight. "It'll be nice to hang out with no pressure, you know? Just fun. Maybe dancing!"

Weiss stared at her. Was _that_ what was going on there? Her stomach churned, and she ruthlessly shoved the feeling away. Being jealous of her teammates because they got to go to a stupid dance was a new personal low.

"How about you, Neptune?" Yang said, in a transparent attempt to redirect attention away from herself. "Asked anyone _cool_ to the dance lately?"

"That's not fair!" he blurted. "I can't yell no hetero when _I_ chicken—ow!"

Sun slung an arm over Neptune's shoulders, as if he hadn't clearly just kicked him under the table. "Don't mind him, he's just bitter because he's been overthinking it for a week."

"Dude, shut up!"

The game ended with a decisive victory for Jaune and Pyrrha—Yang's trap card strategy didn't work very well when the entire table had seen her hand, and Neptune kept losing track of his own forces. Odd, really, since he'd been an absolute terror the last time she'd seen him play. Weiss herself still barely understood the rules.

Sun left once they'd cleaned up. Neptune waved him off, then hung back, shifting from foot to foot and thumbing through random books on the shelves. Yang glanced at him, rolled her eyes, and tucked the game under her arm. "Ruby and I are gonna go call our dad before bed."

"We are?"

"Yep. It's been almost a week, he's probably started talking to Zwei."

"Can't we just do that in the—" Yang grabbed Ruby and started walking away, and her confusion turned into muffled protests that it was _fine,_ she could _walk!_

Blake must have been in on it too, or maybe Yang had done something to prompt her. "I wanted to find a book first. Do you mind going on ahead, Weiss?"

"I suppose not?"

Neptune straightened up from where he'd been leaning against the wall. "I'm going that way," he said, oh so casually. "If you want me to walk you back."

Her heart sank. Something told her she knew exactly what was coming—but with all of them watching her, she couldn't think of a reason to say no. So, she went.

Neptune was silent for a while. Long enough that she almost started to relax. Then he cleared his throat and said, "I... sort of have a confession to make."

_Oh, no._

"I don't usually go to this kind of stuff. Just stay in, tell everyone I think it's lame, you know? But, uh, the thing is... it's not that I don't want to go, I just... can't. See, I have this secret."

Her wings prickled with pins and needles. "Do you."

Neptune took a deep breath, as if bracing himself to dive out of a plane. Then, all at once, in a flurry of words she almost didn't understand, "Ican'tdance!"

"What."

"I can't dance. At all. Sun say's it's like I turn into one of those wacky inflatable arm things."

"That's it. _That's_ your big secret?"

"Pretty dumb, huh?" He grinned sheepishly. "So, I guess... I was wondering if you wanted to go with me anyway. I promise I'll make you look super graceful by comparison."

Weiss looked away. "I can't."

"Oh. Sorry."

This was the part where she was supposed to apologize back. To tell him she wished she could go to the dance, that she had a secret of her own. But even the thought made her bristle, and it would only lead to more questions. "It's alright," she said instead, which was true, and, "I'm glad you asked," which wasn't.

She entered the dorm expecting to be alone, and was disappointed to find Yang sitting cross-legged on her bed. "How'd it go?" she asked.

"Badly."

Yang blinked. "What? I thought you wanted—"

"Well, I didn't." She crossed the room and started rifling through the papers on her desk for something to do with her hands. "What did you do, anyway? I know you made him ask."

"I didn't make him do anything. He wanted to ask you, and I wanted to ask Blake, so we sort of... talked each other into it."

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, right, like you asked Blake properly."

"Why does everyone keep—you know what, never mind. What happened? Are you okay?"

"Why do you care?"

Yang groaned. "Look, Weiss, I get that you're trying really hard to make us all hate you, but believe it or not we do actually care about you."

"Right."

"Ruby's upset, because you keep running away whenever she tries to talk to you. I think she thinks you're mad at her. Blake told you something really important and personal right before you started self-destructing, and now she's feeling guilty even though she didn't do anything wrong. So could you just... just _try_ to talk instead of exploding, for once? Because as frustrating as it is watching you hurt people I care about, I can tell you're hurting yourself a lot more."

"I can't go to the dance," Weiss said. "Happy?"

"Did you want someone else to ask you instead?"

"No. It doesn't matter who I go with, I just can't. And I'm not going to tell you why, so you might as well drop it."

Yang sighed. "Okay. I'm sorry. You don't have to go, and you don't have to explain it to me if you don't want to. But you _do_ have to do something else for me."

Weiss glared at her.

"Don't bury yourself in textbooks while the dance is going on, okay? Relax. Get some food. Walk around. I don't know. Just... do something that makes you happy. Please?"

It felt like someone had tied a knot around her guts and pulled. A shout from that part of her that thought it knew better, that kept trying to lead her off one cliff after another, that just would not _shut up._ "I don't want your pity," she snapped. "Save it for someone who cares." And then she turned on her heel and stormed into the bathroom, so that Yang would stop looking at her like that.


	5. Green

Friday night. Eight o'clock. Weiss sat alone at a long table, surrounded by textbooks. It wasn't as satisfying as she'd hoped. She flipped a page, propped her chin in her hand, and wished they hadn't stopped getting homework after their written exams ended. It was infuriating, to have so much time and nothing productive to spend it on.

She got some food. The dining hall was closed for the event, so she ate a bowl of granola that tasted like sawdust and tried to ignore the faint scent of salmon hors d'oeuvres coming from the ballroom.

She relaxed on her bed. With everyone else gone, she could lie on her right side with her back facing the room, instead of putting all her weight on her left shoulder. It felt odd. The music from the dance was too loud to be blotted out with a pillow over her head, even through the walls. She couldn't sleep.

So, she walked. Aimlessly, or so she'd thought—but her body didn't do aimless very well. She spiraled closer and closer to the ballroom, until she could see through the windows. The dark surrounded her. It was oddly comforting to be lost in the shadows, invisible behind the glass, knowing it would act as a mirror to anyone inside.

It was Jaune, of all people, who she noticed first. In her defense, he and his team were clearly the center of the party. They danced in perfect sync, with Ren looking fantastically out of place in his tux and Nora clearly having the time of her life. Her eye twitched as she realized that Jaune had paired a perfectly nice dress with a pair of sneakers, because of course he had. Pyrrha was stunning, and they clashed terribly, but she didn't seem to mind.

Ruby wasn't by the punch bowl like she'd expected, but out on the floor with Penny. Both were making jerky motions with their arms that almost looked like dance moves. For some reason, Ruby had a drink in each hand. She spilled one as Weiss watched, jumped, and tried to rub away the stain at the hem of her dress while she balanced both cups on one arm. Penny smiled and pretended not to notice.

Neptune was alone. Stiff as a fixture at the edge of the room, fiddling with his tie as he watched the others dance. For those few seconds, both of them stood on the outside looking in. There was a kind of comfort to it, a sense of solidarity even though he had no idea she was there. Then Sun crashed into his side, slinging an arm over his shoulders and saying something that made him laugh until he bent double. Just like that he was back in motion, talking to pretty girls and even asking one of the second years to dance.

She braced herself for a surge of emotion, of anger and hurt and jealousy. Instead, she felt a distant, hollow ache. She wanted to be in that room. Not necessarily dancing with Neptune—she'd be as happy to walk up to Ruby and find out why on Remnant she thought she needed two cups of punch. To have seen the moment Jaune walked in, and to know whether or not it had made Pyrrha laugh. And she was annoyed with Neptune, because she could have done all that if he hadn't asked her, if she could have shown up alone without hurting him or worrying that he'd touch her back. But mostly, she was just relieved he wasn't sitting out because of her anymore.

Weiss moved on, passing out of the scattered patches of light cast by the ballroom windows and into deeper shadows. It was much better out here, with only the distant music to remind her. The path wound between a few hedges, scattered with dappled light and shade from a lamppost up ahead.

The smells coming from the ballroom almost drowned it out. Fruit punch and sweat, alcohol and flowers. She was already turning around a hedge when she caught it, the scent of people, not behind her this time but right in front of her. But it was too late to stop, and she thought she was ready, and then she came around the bend and she wasn't. Not at all.

Blake and Yang stood under the lamppost, bathed in warm yellow light. It turned gold where it tangled with blonde hair, highlighted black with violet where it fell on a pair of velvety cat's ears. The two of them were pressed together, Blake's fingers tangled in Yang's hair, Yang's arms wrapped around Blake's waist. Their heads tilted so their noses fit together, like they were trying to erase all the space between them as they kissed.

Weiss wasn't aware of making a noise, but she must have because one of Blake's ears twitched. She ducked back behind the hedges before they could open their eyes and stumbled blindly in the dark, desperate to get away before they noticed her. One of them said something too quiet for her to hear. No one chased her, but she kept running anyway.

She stopped only when she had to, when her chest was seizing against the bindings. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears until she was half convinced it would shake her apart, leeching the fire from her lungs and pumping it into her blood, turning panic to anger. Why was she running? Why was _she_ acting like she'd been caught red-handed, when _they_ were the ones sneaking off and canoodling in the bushes? Had they considered that maybe random passersby didn't want to see that? She had half a mind to go back and tell them—

But then she remembered the way Blake had stood, face tilted up, relaxing into the kiss. The way Yang had laid a palm flat on her back to draw her in, warm and steady. Her chest ached. She couldn't catch her breath.

It was more of the same, that was all. A last straw. She'd been looking in on people enjoying themselves for a long time, and it had added up. It wasn't the kiss that had gotten to her, it was all of it, all the closeness she'd been watching through a pane of glass. She just wanted to be part of some of it, wanted to be in the ballroom—

_Wanted to stand under a lamppost with hands in her hair, hands on her back..._

But that was impossible, and would stay that way until her birthday. The thought twisted up inside her, bitter and grasping and terribly familiar, hating something beautiful because she couldn't have it.

She looked up at the sky. Somehow she'd ended up in the shadow of the CCT tower, so that the light at the top washed her skin in green. She stood there for a moment, breathing as deeply as she could, wrestling with the feeling. The... jealousy. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to swallow it. She was being ridiculous. This was only a momentary lapse, a brief craving for physical affection manifesting in odd ways. She wasn't even jealous of one of them in particular. It meant nothing.

Her heart reluctantly slowed, until she could finally stop panting and breathe through her nose. She recognized the distant scents of the party, the not-so-distant traces of her teammates still standing alone in the hedges—and someone else. Weiss furrowed her brow, squinting into the dark as she scanned the tower in front of her. The unfamiliar smell was definitely coming from that direction. There was a stranger outside the tower, and close by, or it wouldn't be so strong. Twenty feet away? Less?

"Hello?"

No response... and no one in sight. Her stomach churned. It felt like she'd put her hand through solid brick—two of her senses were suddenly at odds, and she had no idea which she should trust. She kept searching, scanning the building for any trace of what she _knew_ was there. Nothing.

Weiss bristled. Her wings twitched and seized, and she took a step back without really meaning to. Something was wrong, here. Nobody went creeping invisibly around the building that housed worldwide communications _and_ Headmaster Ozpin's office unless they were up to no good.

But how was she supposed to explain this? She couldn't tell her professors that she'd _smelled_ an intruder. She considered the building for a moment, debating whether or not to investigate on her own. Calling her weapons locker was the obvious place to start—but no, Beacon kept a record whenever those were used. The Headmaster would ask questions she couldn't answer.

She could ignore it. Should ignore it, really. Weiss the human would never have noticed in the first place.

Weiss the human would have no idea, when she saw it on the news tomorrow, that whatever was about to happen here was her fault. She took a step towards the tower. Then another and another, until she remembered something that stopped her dead in her tracks. There was a third option she hadn't considered.

With that, she muttered, "Must have been a raccoon," for the benefit of whoever was hiding there, and turned on her heel. As soon as she was out of sight of the CCT, she broke into a run. Even if they'd bought that, they'd probably be moving up their timetable just to be safe.

She sprinted in a broad arc around the place where Blake and Yang had been, because they would have asked awkward questions if they'd spotted her. By the time she arrived at one of the side doors, she was already out of breath. She slipped inside and into a throng of people she only vaguely recognized. Scanning the crowd as subtly as she could, Weiss gave JNPR and Sun and Neptune a wide berth. Blake and Yang were thankfully nowhere to be seen. Finally, after several breathless minutes, she spotted her target.

Ruby and Penny had moved from the dance floor to the wall, and were chatting so animatedly that Weiss worried they'd put someone's eye out. Her partner broke out into a grin the second she noticed her. "Weiss! You came!"

"Is that punch on your dress?"

It was a little mean, maybe, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Ruby looked down, then yelped and bolted for the bathroom. Leaving Weiss alone with Penny.

"You know," she said bluntly.

Penny nodded.

"Follow me. I need your help with something."

Weiss filled Penny in as much as she could on the way to the CCT. She was a little surprised that she was allowed to get all the way through her explanation—and that Penny had followed her at all. "I know I shouldn't be complaining, but... you're just going to take my word for it?"

"That is not necessary," Penny said. "My sensors indicate a heat signature on the top floor of the building."

Definitely a robot, then. How... _why...?_

But she could worry about that later. Weiss started towards the building, then stopped when Penny stepped in front of her. "I should lead," she said. "You do not have your weapon."

Penny hadn't suggested she call it, which probably meant she knew it would be a dead giveaway for Ozpin. Or maybe she just didn't know about the rocket lockers. Did Atlas Academy have those? Would Penny even get one? And, hang on, "You don't have a weapon either!"

"I am combat ready," Penny announced. A panel in her back slid open, and eight floating swords shot out. Each one had its own magnetism, shifting and changing at a whim, so that they spun gracefully until all their points were aimed at the door of the tower.

Weiss opened her mouth. Closed it. Shook her head. "After you, then."

Inside the CCT was pitch dark. Except for the faint green glow of Penny's eyes, which was eerie enough to make her second guess this entire plan. The building was closed this late at night, but the silence still made Weiss uneasy. She sniffed the air, and caught only a faint hint of someone else in the building. Had they already left?

But it got stronger the higher up they went. They took the stairs, because the elevator would make a noise that might alert the enemy. Penny made it all the way to the top with no apparent difficulty. She wasn't even out of breath. Weiss, meanwhile, tried to pant as quietly as she could while ignoring the pain in her ribs.

  
Penny glanced at her, clear concern in her eyes. Weiss scowled and jerked her head towards the door to Ozpin's office, raising an eyebrow in question. _Are they in there?_

She nodded.

Reaching towards the knob, she wiggled her outstretched hand back and forth and then pointed to Penny. _Can you open it?_

In retrospect, she definitely should have been more specific. Penny tilted her head to one side, considering the problem, then slammed a palm into the door. Her own body barely moved. The door went flying into the opposite wall with the force of a runaway car.

Weiss stood in the doorway with her mouth hanging open. Twenty feet away, an unfamiliar girl stood by Ozpin's terminal with her mouth hanging open. She recovered quickly, snatching up a data drive that had been plugged into the machine and slipping it into her pocket. Then she lowered herself into a defensive crouch, and flipped out a long whip that crackled with lightning Dust. There was a mask over her eyes, white and red and styled to look like a Grimm's. White Fang.

"Schnee," she snarled.

Weiss balled her hands into fists. The girl must have been a faunus if she was one of _them,_ but if it weren't for the mask she would never have been able to tell. No bow, no hat, nothing. She wasn't even trying to hide it. Of course she wasn't. They embraced their animal side, flaunted it, used it to hurt people.

_Do you want to be like that?_

_Well?_

_Answer me!_

It was a pity she didn't have her rapier.

Weiss darted forward, keeping just behind Penny as she skated over a line of glyphs. More popped up on either side of the intruder, so that she had nowhere to run from the eight swords rushing towards her. She yelped and flipped backwards over Ozpin's desk, knocking his terminal to the floor. It smashed and scattered bits of glass everywhere.

_...Oops._

The whip flashed out. In the light of the Dust infusing it, Weiss could see a shadowy mass of gears in the ceiling, all ticking in perfect harmony. The intruder jumped over the glyphs boxing her in and swung across the room, her skin fading as she went from brown to dark grey. Soon she blended into the wall so well it was impossible to tell where she was. It didn't help that this room wasn't much brighter than the rest of the tower, with only the dim glow of the beacon to wash it in sickly green light.

Penny barely seemed to notice that the girl had all but vanished. Her swords lashed out again, and a flash of aura marked where the intruder had gone as one of them clipped her side. "What?!" she blurted, dodging frantically between several more until she was back in the center of the room.

"Your abilities will not help you," said Penny. "Please stand down and wait for arrest."

The girl's eyes flicked from Penny, to Weiss, then back again. They flashed yellow. "Like hell." She dove for the window.

Weiss twisted her fingers and blocked it with another glyph. Obstructing the girl's movements was about all she could do, at the moment—she didn't have the Dust for anything more complicated than a barrier glyph. Or the skill for a summons.

The intruder scrambled away from the sudden dead end, taking another hit from Penny's swords as she went. She tried going on the aggressive, but it was abundantly clear that she was outmatched. There were just too many swords for her to focus on, and as agile as she was, she was clearly struggling to handle Penny's sheer strength and speed.

She tried to disengage. Weiss blocked her with more glyphs, forcing her into a smaller and smaller cage with Penny. It was only a matter of time before she went down, and she knew it.

And then, Weiss made the mistake of moving. She took a step and slipped on one of the shards of glass left over from Ozpin's terminal. Her arms shot out instinctively to catch her balance, and they did—but her wings tried to do the same thing. The cramp drove the breath from her lungs and shattered her concentration. Her glyphs popped out of existence, and the intruder slipped past Penny before she could recover.

She slammed into Weiss, sending her tumbling over Ozpin's desk to smash into his chair. It went flying through the window and plummeted fifty stories to the ground. She lay on her stomach, feet from the edge, staring down at its mangled remains. Even then, she was only distantly aware of the danger. Her heart didn't race. Her hands didn't shake. But her wings responded to the drop, fighting against the bindings without any input on her part.

This time, the cramp was so bad that her vision whited out. She scuttled away from the edge on her hands and knees. It wasn't enough. She couldn't catch her breath, couldn't even stand up. The snap of the whip made her raise her arms to defend herself, and Dust crackled against her skin. Her aura shattered. The next strike slipped past her guard and tore a long gash into her side.

"Weiss!"

Penny tried to get her swords between them, but in less than a heartbeat the intruder retracted her whip into a rapier. She thrust forward so that the tip was poised under Weiss' chin. "I'm leaving," she said. "Drop the swords."

"I am incapable of being disarmed." Penny raised her hands, and retracted her weapons into her back. The intruder twitched. "Is this acceptable?"

"Fine," she snapped. "Just back the fuck up."

Penny backed against the wall.

"Good." Without warning, the intruder kicked Weiss' side, _hard,_ right where she'd been cut. She crumpled to the floor, struggling to breathe, and only dimly registered the faunus girl running past her and jumping out the broken window.

"Weiss?" Penny crouched down beside her. "Are you alright?"

Weiss nodded. She touched the wound in her side and winced when her hand came away red. "It's shallow," she said, though she had no idea if she was telling the truth. "We have to go after her—"

"The enemy has likely already reached the ground," said Penny. "I can look for her, but my heat sensors have a limited range. Capture would be better achieved by alerting the authorities and widening the search."

Already reached the ground? What was her landing strategy, _free-fall?_ "Drat."

Penny helped Weiss into the elevator. "You need immediate medical attention," she said, as they started to descend. "I will inform General Ironwood and Professor Ozpin—"

"No."

"But—"

"I mean, yes. Obviously you need to tell someone. But you have to tell them it was you who noticed someone was in there. Don't mention me." Weiss gingerly touched her side and winced. "I can't explain how I knew to anyone else. It's better if no one knows I'm involved."

"What about your injury?"

"I'll deal with it."

Penny frowned. "The odds of infection within the next few days after a complete aura break are—"

"Irrelevant."

"—very high, considering your weakened state."

"Excuse you?"

"You do not appear to have acquired adequate sleep or nutrition for some time. An infection in this condition could severely impede your aura recovery and possibly be fatal."

"I'm not human, Penny," Weiss gritted out. It stung more than she'd expected, saying it out loud. "If I go to the infirmary, they're going to find out. And if that happens—" she faltered, then steeled herself. "If they find out about me, they'll find out about you."

Penny tilted her head to one side in confusion. Then her face fell. "Oh. You are threatening me."

Weiss hadn't thought anyone but Ruby could make her feel this much like she'd kicked a puppy. "You saved my life," she said, more softly this time. "I'm grateful for that. But this is more important to me."

"I don't understand."

"You don't have to. You just have to keep a secret."


	6. Cornered

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, holy crap! This has an omake now! If you want an awesome what-if story from Blake's POV, go check out [The Scent of Blood](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28519791) by Clockwerkchaos!

Weiss was very lucky her teammates were the sort of people to run towards a commotion. She had over an hour alone in their dorm, once she managed to drag herself over the threshold. Something had to be done about the bleeding—if it showed through her coat, there would be no avoiding the infirmary. She raided the first aid kit in their bathroom for bandages, layering them over the wound until she stopped seeing red. After that, all it took was a safety pin, and she was free to put on the bindings and a set of spare clothes.

...And it also looked like she'd murdered someone in their bathroom.

After a lot of frantic scrubbing and accidentally pulling at the injury, the only evidence was her bloodied dress and jacket. She held them up, frowning, trying to think of an easy way to dispose of them. Before she had the chance, she heard the familiar click of the door unlocking. Weiss dove for one of her suitcases, shoved the clothes inside, and kicked it under her bed an instant before Ruby came barreling into the room.

"Weiss!" she blurted. "You won't believe what just happened! Penny just fought off a White Fang attack _by herself!"_

Ruby dragged a reluctant Penny into the room by her wrist, with Blake and Yang right behind them. Weiss found she couldn't quite look them in the eyes. She feigned surprise as best she could and asked about the attack. Penny seemed reluctant to talk about it, but Ruby eagerly filled in the gap, bragging on her behalf and practically vibrating where she stood.

"I can't believe I _missed_ it!" Ruby waved her hands wildly. "I went to the bathroom and when I got back you were both gone!"

Blake's brow furrowed. "Wait, Weiss, you were at the dance?"

"Only for a moment," Weiss said, fighting to keep her voice steady. "I said hello to Ruby and then I left. I looked for you and Yang, but I couldn't find you."

Yang flushed. "I'm gonna—uh—makeup! I should take that off!" She ducked past them and into the bathroom. Blake watched her go, the corners of her mouth twitching in amusement.

Ruby groaned. "Ugh, Weiss, you suck! Why didn't you wait for me? We could have gone with Penny and stopped the break-in together!"

Weiss looked Penny square in the eye—but she didn't dare quirk an eyebrow, because quite frankly she'd give much better odds to Blake figuring out what that was supposed to mean than Penny. "I wasn't feeling well," she said.

Looking utterly miserable, Penny shifted from foot to foot and said nothing.

"Oh my gosh! Are you okay?"

"I'm better now. Just a bit of an upset stomach, that's all."

Penny glanced from Weiss, to Ruby, then back again. Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again—

"Weiss?" called Yang's voice. "Did you clean the bathroom?"

_Drat._ "Yes," she admitted, trying to sound bored as her heart thudded against her ribs. "Why?"

"How is that doing something fun during the dance?" _Oh, thank the gods._

"I never agreed to that."

"Right," Yang sighed, as she walked back out of the bathroom. "Stupid me thinking you'd actually take care of yourself."

Penny fiddled with the bottom of her skirt. "Are you okay?" Ruby asked her. "Oh, no! Should I stop talking about the break-in? I guess that would have been really scary."

Weiss shot Penny a warning glare. Blake noticed, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. Penny looked back at her, squared her shoulders, and said, "I am sorry."

"Huh?" Ruby frowned at her. "Penny, why? You did amazing!"

"I told General Ironwood that I noticed an intruder inside the building. And that I fought a White Fang operative inside, who escaped by breaking a window. All of that is the truth, but there is other truth that I did not tell the General."

"Maybe we should talk about this tomorrow," Weiss interjected. "Clearly Penny is _exhausted—"_

"Go on," said Blake. "What happened?"

"Weiss was with me."

Her teammates' baffled exclamations jumbled together, until it was hard to tell who had said what.

"She was injured. I was not supposed to talk about it." Penny looked up, meeting Weiss' eyes with her wide green ones. "You told me the secret was more important, but I do not agree."

"You don't agree." Weiss' voice came out so cold and flat she hardly recognized it.

Penny's shoulders hunched a little, but she stood her ground. "You are hurt."

"Oh, really? I hadn't noticed!" Weiss took a step forward, and Yang's arm shot out to block her. She shoved it roughly aside, then snarled when it pulled at the wound. "I must be so stupid that I can't see what's right in front of me. Clearly I need someone good and wise to protect me from my _own decisions!"_

Ruby stepped in front of Penny, glaring fiercely at Weiss. "Stop it!"

_"No."_

Her head was spinning. All this time, all this effort, less than six weeks before she could _finally_ be free, and it was crumbling right before her eyes. There was no escaping it now—her teammates would never let up once they knew she was injured, and no one could get a decent look at the wound unless Weiss unbound her wings. Her future was ruined. And all to help her.

Because of course it was. Of course Penny was right and she was wrong. Of course she had Weiss' best interests at heart. She'd see that someday, when she was older, when she'd grown up enough to understand the true complexity of the problem. Penny knew better. Penny had done her a favor. Penny had saved her from herself. Weiss should be _grateful._ Didn't she know how hard it was to argue with Father?

To hell with grateful. If she was going to lose everything, she was going to make it hurt.

"Maybe I don't agree with you keeping secrets, either," Weiss spat. "And that means it's my decision now, is that it? I get to tell whoever I want that you're a machine."

Shocked silence followed. Yang was the first to recover, just enough to say, "Huh?"

Penny didn't flinch. "I am the first artificial being capable of producing aura," she said, the words stiff in a way that suggested she'd had time to plan them. And then, softer, "I'm sorry I lied."

Blake and Yang just sort of... stared. Too baffled to speak.

Ruby didn't say a word, either. She rushed forward and threw her arms around Penny's shoulders, standing on her tiptoes so that she could reach. Weiss watched Penny's face go rigid with surprise, then relax into a sort of dumbstruck wonder.

"I... don't get it," Yang said. "What do you mean artificial?"

"I was never born like you. I never grew up. I was made, just like this." Penny gestured at herself with her left hand, because her right was still trapped in Ruby's hug. "I'm not a real girl."

"Hey, now." Yang threw an arm over Penny's shoulders, drawing her and Ruby into a sideways hug. "Don't talk like that, okay? Of course you're real."

Blake watched the scene, her bow twitching slightly. "I'm not going to pretend I understand all this... but it's pretty obvious to me that you're a person, whatever else is going on."

Ruby finally pulled away long enough to grin at Penny. It shook a little at the corners—she was hurt, but the softness in her eyes made it clear it was _for_ Penny, not _by_ her. "You're just as real as we are. We're made of gushier parts, that's all." She filled the words with a certainty worth killing for, a promise that deserved to be coveted, guarded with jealousy and with greed.

And then Ruby turned to look at Weiss. Waiting for her to say something.

She stayed silent, because you can't give what you don't have.

Penny left soon after that. It was late, and she had to get back to General Ironwood's ship before someone noticed she'd slipped away, because she wasn't technically supposed to be here. In her absence, the room was very quiet. Weiss stood there, looking from one teammate to another, waiting as the silence congealed.

Then, very softly, "I don't understand." Ruby's shaky smile fell away, revealing raw disappointment underneath. "How could you look at her and not see that she's alive?"

Weiss scoffed. "She has an aura, obviously she's alive. There's not much point debating philosophy when we can literally see her soul."

Ruby made a noise vaguely reminiscent of a teakettle. "Then _why_ didn't you _tell her that?!"_ she burst out, throwing her hands in the air. "Especially when it's your fault she's upset in the first place!"

"I don't know."

"You know, I feel really stupid now. Every time I think you're finally making progress, something like this happens again. I don't even know why I still care. You've been horrible to everyone I care about, and you don't seem sorry about any of it. The only thing I don't understand is... why?" Ruby's eyes flashed, as all that hurt and disappointment mixed with something hard and sharp as steel. "What is _wrong_ with you?"

Weiss had never been one for giving up when she was backed into a corner. She wouldn't have gotten to Beacon if she was. Maybe it was the animal in her, or maybe it was proof she really was her Father's daughter, but she preferred to bite and scratch and fight to the bitter end. She was injured, and her team knew about it—but would they really go to Ozpin over it? Even Yang probably wouldn't bother forcing her to get treatment after tonight.

She turned her back on her teammates and faced the wall.

It was selfish, she knew, but she didn't want that. She didn't want to be the only one too foul for Yang to take care of. The only one too cruel to support Blake. Weiss could live with the animal who'd torn her parents' marriage apart... but not with the monster who finally broke Ruby's hope in other people.

She unbuttoned her jacket and shrugged it off her shoulders.

Didn't she owe them this much? Ruby was right. Weiss was horrible by nature and by habit, but normally she spent all her time with her family, who already knew that. Her team deserved some explanation, at least.

She undid the pins that held the end of the bindings in place.

Her fingers started to shake. What was she _doing?_ It didn't matter what her team thought of her. It didn't matter what they deserved. She'd waited too long and endured too much to be free of this curse, and she couldn't give it up less than six weeks from freedom. She _couldn't._

But it was too late. She was already here, poised on the edge of insanity, and in that moment of weakness she felt a familiar pull. That inner magnetism urging her to jump, because it wanted. _She_ wanted. She craved what Penny had, what Blake had, what didn't belong to her and could never be stolen or taken by force. The wanting gripped her like gravity, and she fell.

The bindings landed on the floor at her feet.

Weiss had turned so that she couldn't see their expressions. She only heard the punched-out sound Blake made, as she choked on a cry of anguish so that all that came out was a hoarse croak. Their eyes burned into her back. Her wings prickled and tried tried to twitch, and another cramp seized her. She doubled over, and might have fallen if someone hadn't rushed forward and grabbed her arm.

"Don't touch me," she snapped. As she jerked away she pulled at the wound in her side, hissing through gritted teeth and pressing her hand against it. Yang backed up, keeping her arms still at her sides.

"Sorry."

"Stop apologizing!"  
  


"Why?" Blake asked softly. "Did you think we were going to be angry?"

"Aren't you?"

Her eyes flicked over Weiss' shoulder, narrowing as they fell on her twisted wings. "Who did that to you?"

"No one. They grew wrong."

"Because you tied them down." Blake's hands started to shake. "Since you were a child, right? He told you to hide them, and he must have seen how badly it was hurting you, and he didn't put a stop to it. So, yes. I'm angry. But not at you."

"I am, a little," Ruby admitted. "You didn't have to do that to Penny. But... I'm sorry, too. I shouldn't have yelled." She wrapped her arms around herself. "Um. I'd give you a hug, but I don't think you'd like that. So just... it's okay. We have to talk about some stuff, but we're okay."

Weiss bristled. This was it, wasn't it? They were angry for her. They didn't hate her. They were bending over backwards to make her feel better. And she hated it.

"Oh, just shut up. All of you! I'm not some victim, and I've already told you I don't want your pity." She grit her teeth through another cramp. "Let's get one thing straight. No one is _making_ me bind them. Believe it or not, I'd rather not be a faunus bastard in the eyes of the world. I'm not one of you. I don't _want_ them."

Blake looked like she wanted to be sick. "Hiding them doesn't make you human."

"I know. I'm not a child anymore, and I didn't tell you this so you would treat me like one. I told you because this is why I can't go the infirmary. That's my decision. If you want to go behind my back because you don't like it, I can't stop you. But don't you _dare_ tell me it's for my own good."

"Okay," Ruby said softly. Yang and Blake both turned to stare at her. "We won't force you into anything," she insisted, "because we don't have to. It's not infected yet, so we'll start by making sure it's clean and bandaged right. Does anyone know first aid?"

Yang wiggled her hand back and forth. "A bit."

"I do," said Blake. "I was out of the kingdoms a lot as a kid, traveling, and not everyone had an aura."

"That'll help." Ruby perked up. "Oh! And we can get some of that cream Qrow uses when he doesn't want to go to a hospital."

Blake squinted at her and Yang. "When he what?"

Yang waved a hand. "He's stubborn about weird things sometimes."

"If that goes well, Weiss, and it doesn't get infected, you won't have to go to the infirmary. And if it does..." She took a shaky breath. "You must have seen a doctor sometime, right?"

"He doesn't know." _Yet._ "But... I could go to him. If I had to."

Ruby took a deep breath. "Okay. What now?"

"We should redo the dressings," said Blake. "And see if it needs stitches."

It did, as it turned out. Weiss sat on the edge of her bed while Blake knelt in front of her, wincing every so often. Not so much from the pain as from the feeling of warm hands at her side. The closeness. It made her wings prickle and twitch. Then it was over, and time to redress it. That used up the last of the bandages from the first aid kit.

"I'll grab some supplies in the morning," Yang offered. "I have some medication I'm supposed to pick up anyway."

After that... they brushed their teeth. They changed into pajamas. Yang fell asleep first, snoring while Ruby tossed and turned and eventually went still. Blake read by moonlight for a while after the lights went off, then set it aside and closed her eyes.

Weiss lay awake. She shifted slightly, taking a few deep breaths as her chest strained against the bindings. Even with the secret out, she still couldn't bring herself to leave them off in front of other people. But they itched, and her wings kept cramping worse than ever, and her mind was whirling. This... didn't feel right. It was too normal to be real.

She was pulled from her thoughts when she heard rustling from the other side of the room. Blake sat up in bed, her fists clenching against the blankets. Her breathing was fast and shallow. Weiss shut her eyes and feigned sleep, but she couldn't help listening.

"Yang?" Blake whispered.

A snore cut off with a snort. "Hm?"

"Can I come up?"

"'Course." Weiss heard bedsprings creak. "Nightmare?"

A shaky breath. Then, "My ears. They were all... all..."

"C'mere." There was more rustling. "Breathe with me. Nice and slow, that's it. You're safe."

They didn't speak any more after that—and Weiss didn't get to sleep for a very long time.

_Never feed an animal,_ she remembered. _It will only ever want more._


	7. Little Black Bow II

The next morning, Weiss woke with her bindings firmly in place. Blake was in her own bed. Sunshine streamed in through a gap in the curtains. In that light, the events of the previous night seemed downright far-fetched.

She got up and shuffled into the bathroom. By the time she came out, she'd halfway convinced herself it had all been a bizarre dream. Or, to be more accurate, a nightmare. But when she came back out, she nearly tripped over her own feet. Blake sat cross-legged on her bed—and her bow was still on her desk.

_Don't stare,_ Weiss told herself.

The first and last time she'd seen Blake's ears had been just a glimpse under a lamppost. Now they were so much closer, catching sunbeams that turned the fur from black to white, and they looked impossibly soft. They perked to attention as Blake noticed her, and swiveled to catch the sound of the bathroom door closing behind her.

And she was staring.

"It seemed fair," Blake said quietly.

Weiss didn't know how to respond to that. "Where's Yang?" she asked instead.

Ruby glanced up from where she was sitting on her own bed. "She's getting food. We were thinking we'd have breakfast in here while we... talk."

"About what, exactly?"

She gave Weiss a flat look that made her wince. Well, it had been worth a try.

"No one's going to tell anyone about you," Blake said. She glanced at Ruby, a hint of challenge in her expression.

"Duh! We get that this stuff is complicated. Nobody's mad at you for not saying anything, we just want to know how we can help." She frowned. "And I want you to talk to Penny. She messaged me this morning, and she feels really bad about what happened. She wants to say she's sorry, but you owe her an apology too. She was only trying to—"

"No."

"Weiss—"

"Absolutely not. I specifically asked her not to interfere and she ignored me. I am not and never will be grateful to anyone interfering with my decisions _for my own good."_ She spat the last words like they were the foulest curse she knew, because they were.

"I'm not asking you to be grateful! I'm asking you to apologize for doing the exact same thing to Penny because you were angry!"

"It is _not_ the same," Blake broke in.

"Well, she's not human and if we were awful people we could have used that to hurt her! It's definitely still bad!"

"I'm not saying it wasn't, but this isn't really the main thing we need to worry about right now."

"It's important," Ruby insisted. "You both hurt each other yesterday, and I want you to apologize to each other so you can move on."

Blake's ears flattened against her skull. "You can't force Weiss to forgive her, Ruby. Or Penny, for that matter."

"I'm not trying to! I just don't want this to mean you guys can't be friends!"

"Well, we can't." Weiss had run out of patience for condescending _help_ long before she'd met Penny.

"But—!"

The door opened. Yang froze, three trays stacked in her hand and one balanced on her shoulder, her eyes flicking around the room. "Oh," she said. "We're arguing already. Great."

Ruby took a breath to speak.

"Nope!" Yang extended one of the trays towards her sister. "Food first. Then, try to relax and reset, okay? We're here to help, not to fight."

Her shoulders slumped. "Fine," she grumbled, taking her food and setting it in her lap. After a moment, she looked up at Weiss. "You don't have to apologize," she said grudgingly. "It's... pretty obvious when you don't mean it, anyway. But just... _please_ tell Penny what you said to us, about seeing her soul. I think she thinks you think she's not real."

Weiss' eyes nearly crossed at the phrasing. "What?"

"She's upset, Weiss! We're probably the first real friends she's had in... well, ever. It seems like she's not used to being treated like a person."

Her stomach knotted. "Fine," she sighed. "I can do that."

"Thank you." Ruby smiled at her. "Really. I know that must have sucked for you too, since Penny was the only one who knew... um." Her nose wrinkled. "Actually... how did you guys find out all that stuff about each other in the first place? Haven't you only talked like once?"

"I have no idea how she knew about me." That had been a running theme in her dreams lately. "She must have some kind of enhanced senses, but she never said how they worked. As for her, well... she's magnetic."

"Okay?" Yang passed Weiss her tray. "That's not actually an explanation though."

Weiss bit her lip. She'd never told anyone about the lines before, but... "I can see magnetism. It's hard to explain, sort of like light, except... not."

"Whoa," Ruby breathed, her eyes shining. "That's so cool!"

"Is that part of the whole nightvision thing?" asked Yang.

"I don't have nightvision."

"Pretty much all faunus have some kind of enhanced senses," Blake explained. "Nightvision isn't actually the most common, but even without it most of us can handle the dark better than a human."

"Is it okay to ask what yours are?" Ruby asked Weiss.

She shrugged. "It doesn't really matter. I don't get lost, and my sense of smell is more sensitive than it's supposed to be."

"There's nothing wrong with it," Blake insisted.

"Recognizing which brand of toothpaste someone did or _didn't_ use this morning from across a room is more curse than blessing. Trust me."

"Wait!" Yang snatched something off her breakfast tray. "What's in my hand?"

"An orange. I can see the peel, Yang."

"Yep!" Yang grinned at her and swiped another piece of food. "Come on. Let's try without cheating this time."

Weiss' eyes narrowed at the challenge. "Open the window and I'll do you one better."

Ruby stood up and did just that. Weiss took a deep breath, closing her eyes and focusing. As usual, someone had left one of the dining hall windows open. "You got there too late for the waffles. Skipped the sausages, which was a good idea. They're starting to go off. I don't know why you didn't take any cookies—oh, right. Oatmeal raisin."

"Holy shit."

Weiss smirked and folded her arms. "I can tell you what they're going to serve for lunch, too, if you still think I'm cheating."

Yang put her hands up in surrender. "Nope! You win."

"And don't you forget it." Weiss turned her head and noticed Blake looking on with a soft smile. "What?" she demanded.

"Nothing."

"Well? Is that it? Can we please go back to pretending this never happened?"

"Yeah, no," said Yang. "You need to change your bandages first."

Weiss made a face.

"Don't look at me like that. Keeping it healthy means we don't have to deal with finding you a doctor, remember?"

"Ugh." Reluctantly, Weiss let Blake lead her into the bathroom. At least this time it was only one person... but she found herself staring fixedly at the ground as she shucked off the bindings. Her wings were still tucked away behind her, but when she sat on the sink there was a mirror at her back and nowhere to hide them.

True to her word, Yang had brought back a bag of gauze, bandages, rubbing alcohol... everything they would need to take care of the wound. Weiss could have done that, too. Maybe she wouldn't have known about that particular brand of antibacterial cream, _she_ certainly didn't have a Huntsman uncle who liked to show up at her house and bleed on the sofa, but she would have found plenty of supplies.

She would not have been able to clean it so well. Dabbing lightly, muttering an apology every time she winced. She wouldn't have known how to put the stitches in, or how to apply the cream so gently that it hardly stung, like she'd done this a thousand times before.

"You're good at this," she admitted.

Blake's smile didn't reach her eyes. "Lots of practice." She tucked the end of the bandage under itself, then pinned it in place. "Listen, Weiss..."

"Ugh. What?"

"I know I don't really get it." Blake reached out to touch her shoulder, and she jerked away. "Sorry. Being who you are, in that family... I can't imagine what that would be like. But we're on your side, all of us! You don't have to do this alone. You're not an animal, and there's nothing wrong with—"

"Stop." Weiss snatched up the bindings and started winding them around herself.

"Maybe you don't want to hear this, but—"

"No, I don't." She pulled on her jacket and moved to the door. "Especially not from you. We're doing the same thing, the only difference is that your ears are easier to hide. So no, I'm not going to listen to you preach at me."

She shouldered her way back into the room, where she realized from Yang and Ruby's wide eyes that she'd been speaking much too loudly. "Don't start," she snapped.

"You're right."

Weiss blinked. Turned around to look at Blake. "What?"

"You have a lot more to lose than I do. So... here." She held out her hand, her bow dangling from her fingertips. "Take it."

"Blake," Yang said, "You don't have to—"

"I do." Blake pressed the bow into Weiss' hands. "I can't fix this for you, but if I can do anything to make it easier... that's what I'll do."

Weiss closed her fingers around it, swallowing past a lump in her throat. "I... I don't..."

"I'm not trying to pressure you into anything, I promise. You have your reasons for keeping it secret. But as long as I'm wearing that, you won't listen to me when I tell you there's nothing for you to be ashamed of. And I'm going to keep saying it, as many times as I have to. So the bow has to go."

Weiss hesitated with the ribbon still coiled up in her hand. Somehow, despite deciding to throw it away, she found herself slipping it into her pocket instead.

"Um," Ruby said. "I was thinking we could do a big movie night thing in the rec room, to relax after... all that. But maybe we should just invite a couple people?"

Blake took a deep breath, then forced a smile. "Unless you were planning to bring Cardin, I'll be fine."

"We can get them to come here, though," Yang suggested. "Start with people we know."

Her ears perked up. "That sounds... really good, actually."

So that was what they did. Less than an hour later there was a knock on their door, which opened to admit Sun and Neptune. Weiss suspected Yang might have given them a different time—neither seemed like the sort to show up early in normal circumstances, and they made the perfect first guests. Neptune looked briefly surprised, then gave Blake a high-five. And Sun...

"Hey!" he burst out, breaking into a broad grin the moment the door opened and he noticed Blake. "You took it off!"

She ducked her head and said, "Yeah." Then, "Wait, you knew?"

"Don't worry about it too much." He folded his arms behind his head. "It's a good disguise and all, but there's no fooling a detective!"

"Uh-huh," Weiss drawled.

He waggled his eyebrows at her. "Wanna bet?"

She scowled. He shrugged and turned his attention back to Blake, for a clap on the shoulder and congratulations.

JNPR wasn't far behind. Jaune came through first, did a double-take, then hovered awkwardly until Nora elbowed him aside and half-shouted, "Blake! They're so cute!"

"Thank the gods," Jaune's shoulders slumped in relief. "I thought I was the only one who hadn't noticed until now."

Pyrrha shook her head fondly at him before she stepped inside and beamed at Blake. "I'm glad you felt comfortable enough to tell us."

Ren gave her a nod and a smile. Then his gaze flicked towards Weiss and back again. Pyrrha noticed. "No one's given you any trouble, I hope?" she asked. Politely, but with an undertone that suggested she was offering to fight someone if the answer wasn't a no.

And it all would have been very subtle, if Nora hadn't put her hands on her hips and said, "We're ready to break legs if you want," while looking directly at Weiss.

"Thank you, but that's not necessary," Blake said firmly. She turned and flashed Weiss a smile. "We're okay."

Weiss bristled. Things were most definitely _not_ okay, and hadn't been since she'd shown up at that stupid dance. Just because they hadn't outed her, didn't mean she wanted to deal with all this. It wasn't exactly fun to stand here and watch everyone pat Blake on the head for showing off, when they should... should be...

  
Without any conscious effort on her part, her hand drifted into her pocket. She felt the silky texture of the ribbon against her fingertips. A small sigh escaped her, and all her frustration went with it. She looked away. This was such a ridiculous gesture.

And yet, she still caught herself touching it on and off all afternoon as one movie turned into two. Then two became three, which somehow became a marathon that lasted until dinner. "Let's grab some noodles in Vale," Sun suggested, once stomachs started to growl.

  
"You go ahead," said Blake. "I have a book I need to pick up."

Yang's brow furrowed. "Want me to come with you?"

"No, that's okay. It'll be quick."

"Oh. If you're sure?"

The moment Blake was out of earshot, Sun started to laugh.

Yang gave him a playful shove.

"What? I'm just noticing the _blatant pining,_ is all."

"Right," she drawled, giving all of JNPR a _look._ That got the whole team flustered and in denial, and once everyone was thoroughly distracted, Yang's shoulders relaxed and she cast an anxious glance over her shoulder.

Weiss narrowed her eyes. That hadn't been Yang acting awkward around Blake—she might have believed it a few days ago, but now she was in the unfortunate position of knowing exactly how much of that tension had cleared. And if Yang had noticed something off about Blake, that meant there had definitely been something off. She'd dodged company and questions. She was hiding something.

_Blake Belladonna,_ she thought, as she gave the ribbon in her pocket another squeeze. _You'd better not be sitting on another bomb as big as the last one._


	8. In Search of Proof

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Real quick content warning:
> 
> This chapter contains racial profiling and a negative encounter with police. There's no violence involved, but it's still a bad time all round. If you're not in a good place to read that, you may want to skip the middle section (between the first and second linebreaks)

Weiss didn't have long to worry about Blake's mysterious disappearance. She was soon too busy wondering—aloud, very pointedly—why Ruby kept checking her scroll.

Ruby glanced over her shoulder and waved. "You promised!" she whispered, as Weiss whirled around to find Penny hurrying towards them.

"A _warning_ would have been nice," she hissed back. But Ruby was already rushing to meet her, talking rapidly and waving her hands for emphasis. Anything Weiss might have said got stuck in her throat. She only managed a quiet hello as Penny joined the small crowd of them ambling down the street, and there were too many others around to talk to her properly anyway. So they made their way to A Simple Wok, and Sun gestured for everyone to sit down.

Weiss stared at the stools in dismay. Only Sun and Neptune had seated themselves, and already it was starting to look a bit cramped under the awning. Yang glanced at her, patted the seat beside Ruby, and grabbed one for herself on Weiss' left. She wound up sandwiched between the sisters, her skin prickling where their arms were pressed together... but it was still much better to sit with two people who already knew than risk, say, Jaune accidentally elbowing her in the back.

"Alright!" Sun said cheerfully. "What does everybody want?"

The answer, it turned out, didn't matter very much. Weiss' attempts to get something a little less... heavy were ignored. Then the proprietor stopped in front of Penny, who went wide-eyed and started to hiccup.

"Oh, I doubt she wants any," Weiss interjected. "She can't eat gluten."

Penny's head turned. Weiss caught a glimpse of her startled, grateful expression and made a show of examining a pepper shaker rather than look at it any longer.

It got worse as the meal went on. She could _feel_ Penny looking at her every so often, like an itch between her shoulder blades. Finally she couldn't take it anymore. She stood up. "I'm going to look for a bathroom. Does anyone else want to come with?" There was a pause. Ruby whispered something to Penny.

"I would!" she announced, a second later, and stood up. Weiss opted to ignore the confused looks on some of the others' faces. They'd known her long enough by now to shrug it off as Penny being Penny.

They wandered just far enough away to be out of sight, in an out of the way corner just in front of a defunct book store. Weiss turned, opening her mouth to say—

"I am so sorry!"

Weiss stared at Penny. "What?"

"You were hurt, and I did not know what to do. I thought that our friends would help you, but I also told them something you did not want me to." Penny looked down. "I understand if you do not want to be friends anymore."

She pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. "No wonder you and Ruby get along so well," she muttered. Then, before Penny could misconstrue that somehow, "Stop. Just... stop. I don't want an apology, and I'm certainly not going to give you one. Let's not pretend it was anything noble or special. You told them because it made you feel better, and I retaliated because it made me feel better. It's... something people do. We get afraid, or angry, and then we hurt each other."

"...Oh." Penny looked at the ground. Then something occurred to her, and her head jerked back up. "People?"

Weiss folded her arms. "Don't do that."

Penny's head tilted to one side. "Do what?"

"Ask. Why are you waiting for _me_ to call you a person when the evidence is right there in your aura? It's not like my opinion on the subject actually matters."

"Do you not want to be told that you are not a thing?"

Weiss flinched, and clenched her fists to stop herself from reaching into her pocket. "I want a lot of things I shouldn't," she admitted.

"I... do not understand you."

"Most people don't."

They returned to the noodle stand. Penny squeezed in next to Ruby and whispered something. A second later, Ruby hopped up from her seat and grabbed Weiss in a hug. She jumped, startled, and might have flinched away—but Ruby had taken great and _suspicious_ care to avoid her wings, throwing both arms around her shoulders rather than touch her back.

"What did she tell you?" she demanded, keeping her voice hushed.

"Just that I should do this." Ruby gave her a last squeeze and let her go, bouncing back to her seat. Weiss followed, pointedly avoiding the gazes of the others who'd noticed the moment.

Things settled down. The sun set, and soon they were all crowded together in the patch of light cast by a small lantern set under the awning. Shadows deepened between the streetlights, and the sounds of the city faded just a little. Empty bowls sat in front of all of them—except Penny, who didn't need to eat, and Ruby, who was still only halfway through hers because the two of them kept chattering back and forth. After demolishing both her own bowl and a solid chunk of Ren's, Nora had passed out on his shoulder. Heads were nodding all around, but no one moved. No one seemed to want to get up to go back to the dorms.

It was odd. Weiss was aware of her own discomfort, of the way her skin itched where it touched her teammates' arms... but it felt distant and unimportant. A hush had settled over them, a calm, dreamlike feeling that came from the dark and the quiet. Wedged between two people who knew what she was, she couldn't feel human—but she felt... easy. Relaxed. Almost normal, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Probably something to do with being too full and half-asleep. Even so, she didn't want to be the one to break the spell. She leaned on the counter and tried to ignore the warmth at her sides—which backfired immediately. Somehow, even with Ruby getting more and more animated talking to Penny and gesturing wildly with both arms, sometimes narrowly missing elbowing Weiss in the face, it was Yang she kept getting distracted by.

Did she always run this hot? The late-summer nights were getting cool, and this one was no exception, but Weiss felt downright feverish. It was like being squished against a radiator. This was something she recognized from living in Atlas—being warm in a cold room made it nearly impossible to stay awake. She nodded once, twice, fighting it with grim determination until Yang chuckled and bumped her gently with her shoulder. "Go ahead," she whispered. "We'll make sure no one gets too close."

Safe. That was the word she'd been looking for.

Weiss opened her mouth to reply, but before she had the chance she felt Yang stiffen and twist to look behind her. "Blake?"  
  


All of them scrambled to look. Blake was walking briskly towards them—and if the fact that she'd just spent hours on a quick errand to pick up a book hadn't clued them in that something was wrong, one glance at her would have done the trick. Her ears were flat against her head, her arms were wrapped around her middle, and every few paces she looked over her shoulder as if expecting someone to start chasing her.

Yang nearly toppled over her stool in her haste to stand up. "What's wrong? Are you hurt?"

Blake shook her head. Her eyes darted towards Weiss, then back to the ground. "We have to talk," she said. "The four of us. It's urgent."

She looked even worse up close. Pale and shaky, her ears swiveling towards every sound. Everyone under the awning scrambled to their feet—Nora snapped awake from her nap as Ren moved and followed suit, her eyes widening as she took in Blake's obvious distress. They hovered there, wanting to help but not knowing how. Yang tucked Blake under her arm and let her lead the way away from the group, with Weiss and Ruby hurrying after them.

Blake walked for a long time. Every time she found someplace that seemed private enough, one of her ears would twitch and she'd take off in the opposite direction. "This is fine," Weiss said, after her fifth attempt led them to an empty bus stop shelter. "There's nobody but us in earshot."

"You're sure?"

She frowned, considering. "Could you hear us talking quietly from a hundred feet away?"

"Not in a city." Blake took a deep, shuddering breath. "Okay."

"What happened?" Ruby asked, and Yang gave Blake's shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

She was silent for another long moment. Then, she rallied. "Weiss, do you remember the girl who attacked you? In the CCT tower?"

Weiss raised an eyebrow. "She made an impression, yes."

"The way Penny described her, she sounded familiar. I wanted to look into it, so I went to talk to someone I thought would know more." Her hands clenched into fists. "Tukson. He owned a bookstore in Vale, but when I got there it was closed. I started asking around, to find out where he went, and they told me he—" Her voice broke. "He's dead."

Ruby's eyes widened. "What happened?"

"I think he was murdered." Blake pulled away from them, started to pace back and forth within the confines of the shelter. "He used to be a teacher, he homeschooled me when I was little, he wasn't in it to hurt anyone. So if they were planning something... maybe it was too much. Maybe he tried to leave, or warn somebody, and they—!"

Yang took her gently by the shoulders, stopping her pacing. "Blake, slow down. Who is they?"  
  


Weiss already knew. She could feel the sick, dreadful certainty in the pit of her stomach. And maybe Blake saw that when she looked at her, because her shoulders slumped in defeat. "The White Fang," she admitted.

A ringing sound filled Weiss' ears. Blake kept talking, as if from a great distance.

"You have to understand, it was different when we were kids. Back when I met Ilia, the Fang was all about peaceful protest, and standing up for each other legally. It was only after my—our leader stood down that things started to change. Even then, it wasn't... it wasn't like _this._ We sat in restaurants and hotels that wouldn't serve us, protested out in the street where we'd block traffic, just being inconvenient on purpose so that people would actually pay attention to what we were saying."

Weiss could hear her own pulse.

"It got more intense—stealing and sabotage, that kind of thing—but it was working, and nobody was getting really hurt. Except us, sometimes. Then I got moved to Vale, with different people, and..." Blake's voice petered out, and she hugged her arms around herself. "I left when I realized what it was turning into. I guess Ilia didn't."

Yang said... something. Probably meant to be reassuring, by her tone, but Weiss couldn't make out the words. They were drowned out by her heartbeat pounding _stupid, stupid, stupid_ against her ribs. How had she let one of them get this close? She knew what Blake was, knew there was a chance—and that should have been enough, should have warned her. How many times had she been told that it was dangerous to be around others like her? _You were lucky, you were raised right and taught to behave, and now you're ruining it._

"Weiss?" Ruby's hand hovered over her shoulder. "Um... can you maybe say something?"

She had to go. Had to... to leave her team. Get herself reassigned somehow, or transfer to a different Academy, or go home. Her stomach twisted. She'd come so far, she didn't want to live with three more strangers. Not even if it meant they wouldn't know. _Especially_ if it meant they wouldn't know. She couldn't go through all that again, and what were the odds, really, of keeping her secret if she did? She didn't want to blow up her life just because her teammate had been one of them—and it was _had been,_ wasn't it?

But it didn't matter. She couldn't be around one of them, even if she was only an ex-member. An influence like that was too great a risk. She opened her mouth to say as much, but then she looked at Blake. Standing there tense, her shoulders hunched, like she was trying to scrunch herself into the smallest possible space. Her ears were flat. Her eyes darted up, meeting Weiss' for an instant before she dropped them back down to her hands, clenched around one another so that her fingers went white.

Her panic burned away. She couldn't help the way she was born, but she _wasn't stupid._ She'd already argued with Blake. She had almost eighteen years of practice fighting the animal part of her, she wasn't going to turn feral just by being in the same room with the wrong faunus. And if Blake was telling the truth, and she'd realized how awful they were...

"Prove it," she snapped.

"What?"

"You know her. You can figure out where she might go—and I know what she smells like." She glared at Blake. "You said you're not one of them, right? Then let's go stop them." And with that, she strode out of the shelter and into the street. Her teammates scrambled to follow her.

She wasn't like them. She didn't have to run away whenever she encountered a wild degenerate, they weren't carrying some disease she was doomed to catch. They were monsters, plain and simple, and fighting monsters was exactly what she was training to do.

Weiss was a Schnee, too—and she was going to prove it.

* * *

"Well?" she prompted Blake. "Which way? Would she go to the docks, the industrial district? Camp in the woods?"

Blake had to jog a few paces to keep up with her. "No. That's where the police will look, and Ilia knows that. She'll want to stick to a residential area where she won't draw attention. She passes, so probably a human neighborhood—less cops around. Old town, maybe?"

They forged on. Weiss tuned out most of the chatter—except when Yang started fretting about doing this unarmed, and Ruby offered to call their lockers. "Not yet," she said. "Ozpin will ask awkward questions." It would be a lot easier to sell the idea that the four of them had stumbled upon a White Fang operative wandering around Vale than Weiss just happening to break into the CCT at the exact right moment. Even so, that excuse would only work once.

Yang relaxed once they passed out of the commercial district and into the winding streets of old town. All of a sudden, instead of seeing the occasional shady person walking down the opposite side of the road, _they_ were the shady ones. It wasn't until the third time someone crossed the street to avoid them that Weiss noticed the way Blake was shrinking in on herself.

"What is it?"

Her ears went flat. "Nothing. Let's just keep—"

A siren cut her off mid-sentence. Weiss thought nothing of it, at first—except that it kept getting louder, and Blake kept getting more agitated.

"What's going on?" she demanded. "Is that for Ilia?" Which was ridiculous, really, but she couldn't think of any other reason for Blake to be acting so anxious. Because it never occurred to Weiss that the sirens were for them.

"Hey! You kids! Hands where we can see 'em!"

Weiss turned, squinting into a pair of searingly bright headlights. Confused, she raised her hands.

A squad car pulled up in front of them. Two officers got out—one stood back, watching the four of them warily. The other marched right up to them, one thumb looped through his belt. He had dark brown hair and beard, all cut short, and a pair of dark sunglasses even though it was nearly eleven at night.

He stared them down for a moment. It was hard to tell with the glasses, but with the way his head was angled Weiss thought he might be looking at Blake. She stood with her ears pulled back, obviously tense. "What do you think you're doing out here?" he asked.

"We're students from Beacon," Yang said. "We were just taking a walk before we went back."

"Students, huh?" He took off the sunglasses, revealing his eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Any of you armed?"  
  


"No."

"This is ridiculous!" Weiss burst out. "We haven't _done_ anything!"

Blake started to shake her head at her, then froze when the officer's hand moved towards his gun. "Turn around," he barked. "Hands on the car."

"Okay! Okay."

Yang bristled. "Hey! What the hell are you doing?"

"Slate, check for contraband."

The grey-haired officer moved over to Blake and started patting her pockets. Then he fished out her scroll and held it up. "Where'd you get this, huh?"

"We just told you," Yang snapped. "We're students! You can check our IDs if you want."

Sunglasses-at-night nodded at his partner, who started fiddling with Blake's scroll. Then he turned on Yang. "We gonna have a problem, blondie?"

"That depends," she shot back. "Are you planning on telling us what this is about?"

"A call came in, said some punks were prowling around in the middle of the night." Blake flinched. "Want to explain why you decided to take a late-night stroll through a residential neighborhood?"

"We got lost," said Ruby. "That's all! We had a ton of these really good noodles so we wanted to walk around and digest, you know? And then we realized we weren't sure where we were."

Slate finished studying Blake's scroll and held it out. "Take a look, Tanner."

Tanner took it, squinted at it a moment, then scowled. "This you?"

Yang's eyes started to take on a dangerous reddish tint. Blake only nodded, still keeping her palms flat on the car.

"Says here you're human. Why's that?"

Blake hesitated, her eyes darting frantically between the two police. "I—that question wasn't required."

"Is that so?" Tanner leaned against the patrol car, his finger tapping on his gun. "Nobody ever told me you're allowed to lie when the question isn't required. Did you know that, Slate?"

"Sure is news to me."

"Where were you last night, about this time? Hm?"

"I was at the dance," Blake said firmly.

"She was with me the whole night," Yang added. "We never went near the CCT."

Tanner turned his suspicious glare on her, instead. "I never said anything about the CCT."

"We're friends with Penny," Ruby explained. "The girl who caught the intruder. She told us what happened, and she knows Blake! If she'd had anything to do with it she would've recognized her. You can ask her!"

"Are we done here?" Yang asked. "Or are you actually going to charge us with something?"

Tanner walked up to Yang, squaring his shoulders and looming over her—which might have been more effective if he'd been more than an inch or two taller than she was. "I don't like your tone."

"Yeah, well, I'm not a huge fan of yours either."

"Arms out."

"Seriously?"

"Now!"

She put her arms out. Slate patted her down, pulled out her scroll, checked her ID. Tanner gestured at Weiss. "Come on. You two are next."

Her insides went cold. "Excuse me?"

"Arms out."

"Absolutely not!" Weiss backed up a step. "None of us have done anything illegal. This is absurd and I will _not_ humor it any longer."

Blake's eyes widened. "Careful—"

"Shut up," Tanner snapped at her. "Look, miss, we just want to get this over with so we can make sure this neighborhood is safe. It's nothing bad, I'm just going to check your pockets."

Her eyes flicked to the side, where Slate was patting Yang's back—probably checking for any hidden sheaths or holsters. "No."

"You can do me!" Ruby said, stepping in front of her. "She doesn't like to be touched, that's all! We really don't have any of our stuff, it's all in our lockers at Beacon."

"We're having a nice conversation right now." Tanner took a step closer. "The kind that doesn't have to go on anybody's record, you understand? I don't want this to turn into an arrest."

Weiss felt sick. If Father heard about this—

"Step back," Yang warned.

Tanner drew his gun. "Are you threatening me, kid?"

"Weiss!" Blake blurted, "Show them your ID!"

She handed it over, shying away when Slate snatched her scroll from her hand. His eyebrows shot up.

"You can arrest us if you want," Blake said. "As long as you're ready to explain why you thought Weiss Schnee decided she needed lien badly enough to burglarize suburban Vale."

Tanner scowled at her. "You think you're real funny, don't you?"

"No, sir. I'm just trying to get back to school."

There was a brief stare-down, before officer Tanner finally relented and gestured to his partner. "I've got my eye on you," he told her, as he swung open the car door. "I think I'll be checking in with Professor Ozpin about that _optional question."_

* * *

The four of them didn't wait for the car to dwindle into the distance. They walked briskly out of old town, not stopping until they reached the airfield. The moment they were back on familiar ground, Blake deflated. She took deep, shaky breaths, shoving her trembling hands into her pockets and then snatching them back out again. "Hey," Yang said, slinging an arm over her shoulders and tucking her into her side. "It's over, okay? Just breathe. That's it."

"What just _happened?"_ Weiss burst out.

Blake sighed and rested her chin on Yang's shoulder. "Someone must have called them when they saw us. Well, me."

"This is absurd, you were clearly with us!"

Blake stiffened. "Why does that matter?"

"It should have been easy to tell that you're, well—"

"One of the good ones?"

Weiss noticed Blake's glare and met it with one of her own. "Exactly."

"And if I were out here with Sun? Then would it be okay for them to harass us?"

"Of course people would be concerned, but the detectives could have just checked your Beacon ID—"

Blake stepped away from Yang and folded her arms. "I know you're dealing with a lot right now, and that this is hurting you more than it's hurting me. So I'm going to try to explain, and not get angry, even though you're making it really, _really_ hard. Sun and I, alone? They wouldn't have left that easily. They'd have looked for any excuse to hold us, and we might have been arrested. All because some human was _concerned_ that a couple of faunus were walking around in a nice neighborhood. That is not okay. Making excuses for that is not okay."

"They're probably just being reactive," Weiss insisted. "Wehad an attack by the White Fang yesterday!"

"Stuff like this is why the White Fang was _founded!_ I know it's gotten twisted, but I got screamed at more than once when I was just a kid with a sign. Blaming them for how the VPD acts is like blaming smoke for the fire." She clenched and unclenched her fists, then tucked them under her arms. "Weiss, if this had happened in Mantle? It would have been worse. If I'd acted like Yang did, if I didn't have an active aura? I might not be here right now."

Yang reached out to grab her hand, and Ruby made a small distressed noise. A thick silence fell. One that only Blake dared to break.

"Of course they should be looking for Ilia," she said softly. "But that's not what that was. That was someone deciding I don't belong in their neighborhood, and using a system that's supposed to be there to protect people to try and put me in my place. You don't know what that feels like—and I know, I _know_ that doesn't mean you've had it easy, either, but just... try to understand why it's wrong."

Weiss felt sick. Imagining Blake in Mantle was bad enough, but the picture she'd painted of it had been just as bad of a shock. In Atlas she always heard about how dangerous it was down there, but she'd never felt so _close_ to the hypothetical fear before. There was something tangible in her mind now, the same scenario playing out without any of her team present, just her and the headlights, and her own rising temper spiraling out of control. _That's what Winter threatened to toss me into, to keep a promise to a dead man._

"I never said it wasn't wrong." She couldn't look at Blake, so she looked up instead. Still no sign of the airbus yet. "This was clearly a misuse of the system, but there still has to be a system in place." She sniffed the air, and confirmed there was no one close enough to listen. "To deal with us if we fail to control ourselves."

"If we what?" In any other circumstances, she might have been a little proud of how blindsided Blake looked. "We're not wild animals, Weiss!"  
  


"Then why do I keep trying to take off whenever I come near a drop?" Weiss demanded in a harsh whisper. "I know perfectly well it's only going to give me another cramp, but I can't stop. Are you really going to tell me your body never does something ridiculous all on its own?"

"First of all," Blake said, "those are just instincts. It's exactly the same as flinching when you touch a hot stove. And secondly, anyone who called the police on you for acting on them is a bigot, and I can't even imagine someone saying they were _threatened_ by that with a straight face."

"It's an example," Weiss gritted out. "But fine. Since you seem so keen to ignore it, let's talk about _threatening,_ shall we? Let's talk about how sometimes I get so _angry_ I just want to—!" She cut off, her jaw clamping shut.

Blake flinched. Weiss was caught between hurt and satisfaction—but before she could decide which to feel, Yang did the unthinkable. She _chuckled._

Both of them whipped around to stare at her. "C'mon," she said, grinning. "Are you _really_ gonna tell me you think humans never lash out when we're upset?"

"I did," Ruby added. "After the thing with Penny, remember? I got mad and I yelled at you. I wished I hadn't after, but it didn't mean there was something wrong with me. It just meant I needed to apologize."

Blake took a deep breath, and nodded. "Getting angry isn't a sign you're some wild beast. It's a tool being used against you. Everyone gets angry sometimes, and if every time it happens you're told it means there's something _wrong_ with you, if it's taken as proof that you're less than human... sometimes it feels like all you can do is bottle it up until it eats you from the inside."

Weiss shivered. "That's..."

"Not the only thing you can do with it," Yang assured her. "Anger is just a feeling. It's natural. There are good and bad ways to express it, but feeling it doesn't make you a bad person. And it definitely doesn't mean the people telling you you're not allowed to feel it automatically win." She winked. "Trust me on that one."

She was saved from having to respond by the distant whirring of the airbus. Yang glanced up at it, then down at Weiss. "It's okay to feel stuff," she said, bumping her shoulder lightly. "If you're freaked out, that makes total sense. And... if you're mad at me, that's okay too. I wanted to help, but I wasn't sure what to do except get loud and get their attention, which... backfired. I messed up, and I'm sorry."

"I'm not angry at you." Weiss was fairly sure that was true, at least. "I'm just..."

There was a difference. She was sure of it, something important that distinguished the inner animal lashing out from Ruby's outburst. But every time she tried to put it into words, it slipped out of her reach.

"...Confused."


	9. Two Steps Forward...

They didn't find Ilia the next morning. Or that afternoon, or by the time the sun started to set. And after last night, none of them dared continue after dark.

Instead, they clustered together at a table in the library, trying to figure out what information might be worth stealing from the CCT tower. It turned out? Quite a lot.

Ozpin's terminal might contain just about anything, from plans of the school, to dossiers on every licensed Hunter in the kingdom, to top-secret information about Vale's military. "And that's only what he's _supposed_ to have," Blake groaned, dropping a fresh stack of hastily scribbled notes onto the table they'd taken over. "It's Ozpin, I wouldn't be surprised if he has his own spy network."

"So they might have gotten hold of literally anything," Weiss put her head in her hands. "Wonderful. We're back to square one, and we need to _find her_ if we're to have any hope of—"

Ruby kicked her under the table. Her eyes widened emphatically as she glanced over Weiss' shoulder, towards an approaching Professor Goodwitch. Blake paled, and her hands twitched towards the top of her head before she let them drop.

"Hey Professor," Yang said, with an obviously forced grin. "What's up?"

Goodwitch arched an eyebrow. "I believe you already know."

The table erupted. Yang's, "She didn't do anything!" mixed with Weiss', "They were being completely unreasonable!" and Ruby's, "Blake wasn't there! You can ask Penny!" Blake herself stayed silent. She looked like she might be sick at any moment.

Their professor stared at them for several long seconds. Then her lip curled in disgust. "Ah. You're thinking of the message we received from the VPD. No, you aren't in any trouble for that, though if their superiors are doing their jobs then _someone_ will be." She glanced at Blake. "Not that it was any surprise. Miss _Belladonna,_ I do hope you weren't operating under the assumption that none of the staff would recognize your name."

"I was trying to fool people like Cardin. Not Ozpin."

"Good." Goodwitch turned to address the team as a whole. "Now, back to the actual topic of conversation. Your end of year mission."

This time it was Ruby's turn to go white as a sheet. "Oh, _no!"_

"I take it your failure to sign up today was not, in fact, a clerical error?"

"If I said it was, would we get to pick now, or...?"

"Ruby!" Weiss burst out.

"I forgot, okay? There's been a lot going on!"

"Has there," drawled their professor.

"Uh." Ruby sank a little lower in her chair. "We were all _really_ shaken up about what happened yesterday..."

To Weiss' shock, Goodwitch's expression softened slightly. "All the first-year missions have been taken," she said, "but fortunately for the four of you, Beacon Academy is also scheduled to perform a routine clearing of the Emerald forest this weekend. A duty that will now fall to you. Report to the cliffs at six o'clock sharp Friday morning. I will meet you there, and monitor your progress throughout your mission."

She waited just long enough for Ruby to stammer out an agreement—as if there had been a choice anywhere in that announcement—before giving them a cordial nod and striding away.

"What did she mean?" Weiss asked Blake, as soon as Goodwitch was out of earshot. "About recognizing your name."

"Um."

"Blake, I swear if this is another _surprise—!"_

"It's nothing bad!" Blake said quickly. "Just, um..." She glanced around, lowered her voice. "I never exactly _joined..._ that group I told you about. My parents sort of... founded it."

"What."

An embarrassed flush crept up her neck. "My dad was the original leader," she explained. "The one who stepped down to become—" She stopped.

"Become what, Blake?" Weiss demanded.

Blake mumbled something.

Yang's eyes lit up. "Say _what?"_

"Yes, what! I didn't hear a word of that!"

Blake hung her head. "The chieftain of Menagerie."

"Oh my god!" Yang burst out, struggling to keep her voice low and not quite succeeding. "You're basically a princess!"

"No, I'm not! Ugh, I _knew_ you'd get like this!"

Ruby cocked her head to one side, puzzled. "I mean, aren't you next in line to rule a kingdom? How is that not a princess?"

"Shut up, that's how!" Blake rested her forehead on the table and wrapped both arms around her head. "The next chieftain is _elected._ So there."

"Aw." Yang slung an arm over her shoulders. "Don't worry Blake, we're just messing with you! You're still super dark and mysterious." Blake's face was still hidden, so she might have been able to play it cool—except that her ears perked up at the contact.

Weiss rolled her eyes. "Yes, I'm sure you still have plenty more earth-shattering revelations in store. Now if you don't _mind,_ when you were a child and your parents moved to Menagerie, why on Remnant didn't you go with them?"

It was perhaps the most effectively she'd ever killed a mood. The smiles vanished from Yang and Ruby's faces, and when Blake picked her head up to look at her, her ears were once again flat against her skull. "Weiss," Ruby whispered, "maybe we shouldn't—"

"No. It's okay." Blake twisted her head to look around.

"There's no one nearby." One of the main benefits to being in the library at nine pm when exams were already over. Weiss couldn't smell anyone but them, and the bored library assistant sitting all the way at the other end of the room.

Blake sighed and rested her elbows on the table. "I made a mistake," she said. "That's it. I wanted to help, and things were just... they were so _slow,_ back then. We worked so hard, and barely anything changed. It was frustrating, and I couldn't imagine going back to Menagerie, where I'd have even _less_ chance to do something that mattered. So I didn't."

"You went all on your own?" Ruby asked, her eyes wide. "How old were you?"  
  
"Fourteen. But it wasn't like that, really. I'd known Sienna since I was born, and Tukson was the one who taught me to write, and Ilia was practically my sister. They weren't strangers, they were family."

Weiss wished she hadn't asked. "We should get back to work," she said, standing up abruptly. "You heard Professor Goodwitch. We have until Friday to find Ilia, or figure out what the White Fang are doing some other way, or else we'll have to wait until the whole mission is over. That leaves us four days."

Too little time, in other words, to restrict their search to daylight only. Weiss fretted about that all of Tuesday afternoon, as the four of them walked in ever-widening circles through old town. She still wasn't ready to give up once the sun started to set. "Let's go," Ruby said, "we should probably get back to the airfield before—"

"You go ahead."

All three of them started to protest at the same time. Yang was loudest. "You're supposed to be _healing._ What are you going to do if you do find her?"

Weiss scowled. "I'll leave, and the four of us can go deal with it in the morning."

"I still don't like the idea of you doing this all alone," said Blake. "You've seen how good Ilia is at hiding in plain sight. _I'd_ have a hard time spotting her in the dark. And even besides that, wandering around Vale looking for her by yourself, in the middle of the night, while injured, is..."

"Dumb?" Ruby suggested.

  
"I was going to say _reckless,_ but—"

"Yeah, no, it's dumb." Ruby clapped her hands together, cutting Weiss off before she could protest. "Which is why you won't be alone! You're right that we don't have a ton of time, so how about we split up the work? You and I can search at night, and Blake and Yang can do it during the day!" She paused, narrowing her eyes. "As long as you sleep in a bunch. You're still supposed to be healing and this isn't good for you. But I really don't want to make Blake deal with all _that_ again and Yang and I wouldn't know if Ilia passed us on the street."

"That could work," Blake said, though she didn't look overly happy about it.

Yang winced. "Uh. I do think that's a good idea, but maybe I should go with Weiss instead?" She held up her wrists, and her deactivated gauntlets—which were much less conspicuous than Ruby's scythe or even Myrtenaster. "I'm the only one who's armed, so..."

"Wha—why do _I_ need a bodyguard? I'm injured, not useless!"

"Yang's right." Blake made a face—probably wishing she could spend all that time _alone with Yang_ instead of agreeing. "I should be able to talk Ilia down if we find her. If that goes wrong, Ruby can just run. She won't hurt me."

"Be careful anyway," Yang warned. "But Blake does have way better odds of avoiding a fight than you do, Weiss."

She couldn't argue with that, so she didn't bother. Instead she grabbed Yang by the arm and started walking.

They found nothing that night. Weiss would have kept searching longer, but Yang insisted that they take the midnight shuttle back to Beacon. Something about not messing up her sleep schedule too badly when they'd all have to be up and about ungodly early on Friday.

They found nothing the next day, either, or that night. Weiss started to wonder, as she struggled to sift through the heady mix of city smells for hours on end, if she'd even sense Ilia if she did get close. Different people did smell different, but it was a slight thing. By now she could tell which teammate had just walked into the room with her, but would she be able to tell Nora and Pyrrha apart? Maybe, but what if had been too long? What if she couldn't remember Ilia's smell well enough to recognize it?

Thursday arrived with everyone in dismal spirits. They walked the streets all afternoon, speaking only long enough for Ruby and Blake to report that they'd found nothing that morning. Eventually they split up. Not so much for practical reasons, Weiss suspected, but because the tension was getting unbearable between her and Blake.

The sun set. Blake and Ruby returned to the airfield, leaving Yang and Weiss alone in Vale.

"We should head back early tonight," Yang said. "I know you don't want to, but we need to be up really early—" She saw the look on Weiss' face, and sighed. "Eleven at the latest, okay? I know this is important, but so is sleep."

"Tch."

"Hey, it's true!" Yang put her hands on her hips. "Sleep can't fix everything, but not getting enough of it can make anything worse."

They were finished with old town by that point, and were starting to explore some of the nicer parts of the artists' district—Blake's second guess for where Ilia might be.

Assuming, of course, that Blake _did_ want to catch her. But when eleven o'clock came and went without a single hint of their target, Weiss couldn't help thinking. Maybe not.

"It's time to go," Yang said.

"No."

"Weiss—"

"She has to behere."

"No, she doesn't." Yang stepped in front of Weiss so that she had to stop walking. "Yeah, this is the most likely place for her to be, but she might be hiding inside. She might have gone somewhere completely different. We don't know, but we _do_ know that we're going to be fighting Grimm tomorrow morning."

"We have to find her!"

"We'll do what we can, but it's not all on us, okay? The police are looking for her too."

"That doesn't matter."

"Of course it does!"

"No, it doesn't! She got away because of _me,_ alright? Penny would have caught her, but I got one of those _stupid_ cramps and she got away!"

"What?" Yang made to reach out, then caught herself. "If it weren't for you, no one would even have known she was in there."

"That's not the point. I should have done something, and now I'm going to."

"Weiss... what the White Fang does isn't your fault."

"Don't be ridiculous!" she snapped, bristling. "I know that."

Yang's face fell. "Do you?" she asked softly.

Weiss turned away. "I'm going to keep looking. Follow me or don't."

Yang followed.

And then, after nearly an hour with no luck, Weiss stopped dead in her tracks. It was so sudden that Yang bumped into her, almost knocking her over. She hardly noticed. "That way," she whispered, pointing.

"Wait, really?"

"Yes!" Weiss started to jog down an empty side-street, sweat pricking at her palms as she went. Yang hurried after her.

"Wait, hang on, we're not going after her now! We need to get the others, remember?"

"I just want to see where she's staying," Weiss hissed. "For all we know she's only passing through here on her way to some nefarious plot!"

They crept closer, the smell growing stronger as they approached a narrow alleyway. "What could seh be doing in there?" Yang wondered.

"Nothing good."

Weiss darted to the mouth of the alleyway, pressing her back against the bricks. This hadn't been the plan—but anyone hanging around a place like _this_ at this time of night had to be up to no good. Granted, they were still in the nice part of the artist's district, but she was pretty sure that alleyways were universally _bad news._

Yang must have realized what she was about to do. She made a face at Weiss, then reluctantly held up three fingers. Two. _One!_

They both jumped into the alleyway—Yang in front with her gauntlets armed, Weiss right behind her with one hand poised to form a glyph.

A teenaged boy screamed and dropped a can of spray paint.

There was a long, awkward silence.

"Uh," said Yang. "Hi?"

"What the _fuck?"_ he shouted, clutching his backpack to his chest.

Weiss stormed down the alleyway, looking left and right for any sign of Ilia—but the closer she got to the boy, the surer she was. It was his smell she'd tracked here.

"Who the hell are you?" He gestured wildly, mostly at Yang. "What are you _doing_ here?"

Weiss scowled at him. "What are _we_ doing here? What are _you_ doing?!"

He pointed a trembling finger at one wall of the alley, where he'd been painting what looked like a large cow on the wall.

Right. Artist's district.

  
Yang groaned and put a hand to her forehead. "Wouldn't that be easier during the day...?"

The boy folded his arms and glared, though the way his whole body was trembling took some of the bite out of it. "None of your business. Now are you gonna mug me or what?"

"Wha—" Yang looked down at her wrists. She disengaged her gauntlets, and hid her hands behind her back. "No. Sorry. We, uh... thought you were someone we knew. Our bad!" She stepped aside, and he bolted out of the alley without a backwards glance.

Weiss deflated. "Let's go," she mumbled. "She's not here. He smells a bit like her, that's all."

"Oh." Yang walked up to stand beside Weiss. "Right. Um... are you okay?"

Weiss said nothing.

"We'll find her. It'll just have to wait a few days, that's all."

She didn't respond. Yang made a few halfhearted attempts to break the silence during the long walk back to the airfield, and during the tense flight. None of them stuck. By the time they reached Beacon, it was already half past midnight. Despite her exhaustion, Weiss' mind was whirling. Had Blake been wrong, or...

They entered their dorm. It was pitch dark, and silent except for a slight creaking coming from the ropes above Ruby's bed. She stepped forward—and out of the blackness in front of her flashed a pair of glowing yellow eyes.

Weiss nearly jumped out of her skin.

It was only Blake—her eyes must have caught some glimmer of moonlight as she spoke, and reflected it back tenfold. Weiss put a hand over her heart and gasped for breath.

"Blake!" Yang yelped. And an instant later, when she'd recovered from the shock, "What are you doing awake?"

"Couldn't sleep." Then Blake paused, apparently just now realizing what had startled them. "Sorry, I forgot you haven't seen that before."

Yang chuckled quietly. "That's... Is it bad to say it's kind of cool?"

"It has its moments." It was too dark to see it, but Weiss thought she could hear a smile in her voice. "Did you find anything?"

"No," Weiss said flatly. "We walked through all of old town and most of the artists' district. I'm starting to think she's not there at all."

"I'm not sure where else to look. She might have gone to the upper class district, but it would be a lot harder to lie low. She'd have to get a hotel, and those are expensive around there."

"Do you want to find her?"

"What?"

"It's a simple question. Do you actually want us to find Ilia, or not?"

"You think—" Weiss wished it weren't so dark. She couldn't see Blake's expression, but Blake would have no trouble reading hers. "I know I made mistakes, but you don't seriously think I'm... what, leading you in the wrong direction on purpose?"

"I have to ask."

"No, you don't!" Yang burst out. "Blake has done _nothing_ except try to help this whole time!"

"Yang," Blake hissed, "you're going to wake—"

"Bwuh?" Weiss winced. There was a shuffling sound from Ruby's bunk, and then a muffled groan. "Why are we fighting _now?"_ she slurred out. "And what time is it?"

Well. The damage was done, at this point. Weiss flicked on the light.

She wasn't sure what she'd expected, but Blake looked downright miserable. Her ears were flat, and she'd wrapped her arms around her middle. "I know you have no reason to believe me, but—"

"Yes she does!" Yang threw her hands up. "You're not responsible for what they've done since you left! And it's definitely not your fault we can't find a trained infiltration expert we only know is _somewhere in Vale!"_

"I want to believe that." Weiss kept her head high, and made a conscious effort not to put her hand in her pocket, where Blake's ribbon was still hidden. "I really do, but I can't afford for there to be any doubt. My entire life could be ruined by the wrong influence."

"The wrong..." Blake's face fell. "You think I'm trying to, what, corrupt you?"

"I think I've been ignoring the obvious," Weiss said. "Because I didn't want to acknowledge it. Maybe you aren't doing it on purpose, but you're teaching me bad habits. I've worked too hard to get past this. I won't let all that be for nothing."

Blake's ears flattened in anger. "I'm not a wild animal, I'm a person! _You're_ a person!"

"You've already admitted you've given in to your worst instincts before. I need to know you've gotten better, and I just... I can't think of another way to be sure."

"So that's what all this is about? You have to make sure I'm one of the good ones so that you know I'm not a bad influence?"

"Precisely." Weiss started to pace. "I've been listening to you too much. I can't—I can't afford that right now. Not when I'm so close." She stopped dead, realizing a second too late what she'd just let slip.

Ruby's eyes widened. "Close to what?"

"Nothing. Forget I said anything."

"Weiss!"

"Please," Blake said. "We want to help."

Weiss whirled on her. "And what part of any of this has been _helping,_ exactly? Reminding me of everything I can't do? Pretending those _things_ are anything but freakish? Acting like—like the animal isn't _here?"_ She gestured wildly at her chest. "I'm so _stupid_ sometimes, I honestly almost believed you! But it's becoming increasingly clear that I can't trust you. I have my own plan for my future—I do not need or want your help."

"What plan?" Blake demanded. "Keep binding them until we graduate? And just hope you don't get a cramp in the middle of fighting a Deathstalker? You can't keep going like this, Weiss! You can keep it secret, that makes sense, but you'll always know. At some point, you're going to have to face the fact that _you're a faunus._ Hiding can't change that. Blocking me out won't change that. And no matter what you do, no matter how good you are, no matter how many of their rules you follow, some people will never let you forget it."

It was obvious from Blake's expression—she knew exactly what she was doing. She knew _exactly_ who she meant. Weiss' insides twisted. "I'm not going to hide them," she spat. "I'm going to cut them off."

There was a horrible satisfaction in watching Blake's face as it sank in. "You—you can't just—!"

"So much for respecting my choices," she said, and stormed out of the room.

Out in the hallway, reality set in. Weiss swore viciously under her breath. What if Blake decided this called for drastic measures, like blabbing her secret? And where was she going to _sleep?_

The door across the hall slowly eased open, just wide enough for Jaune's head to poke out. "Um, hi?" He glanced at RWBY's door. "Is... everything okay?"

Weiss arched an eyebrow. "It's absolutely wonderful," she said, "Which is why I'm standing in the hallway in the middle of the night."

"Do you... want to come in?"

She looked down. "Yes. Thank you."

Jaune opened the door all the way. Weiss slipped inside, cringing slightly when three other pairs of eyes fell on her. Nora scowled when she walked in, and Pyrrha shot her an uncharacteristically cold look.

"You can take my bed," said Ren. Polite, but not quite looking at her.

"Ooh!" Nora perked up and patted her mattress. "Over here! It's been way too long since we had a sleepover!"

Weiss had neither the energy nor the inclination to unpack that. Instead she lay fully clothed on top of Ren's bed. Since it was in the middle of the room, there was no way for her to keep her back turned towards the wall. She forced herself to take deep breaths through the bindings, and relax. They wouldn't notice. It wasn't actually any easier to tell her wings were there when she was sleeping.

Jaune cleared his throat. "So. Um. We sort of heard you arguing."

Her stomach went cold. "You _what?"_

"Well, you and Blake were yelling a lot? I mean, we couldn't hear what you were saying, but uh..."

"We can guess," Pyrrha said, her expression darkening.

Ah.

That explained the tension.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Yeah, I bet you don't." Nora flopped down on the bed—with Ren, which was apparently a completely normal occurrence that didn't even warrant a raised eyebrow around here—and pointedly turned her back on Weiss. "You're staying here because even jerkfaces don't deserve to sleep on the floor, but you'd better apologize to Blake tomorrow."

A lump rose in Weiss' throat. She swallowed it down, clenching her hands into fists. This was _ridiculous._ She was used to hostility. She'd thrived on being hated in the beginning of the year—part of her had even relished the barbs tossed her way. The chink in her armor had been buried so deeply that no one could use it against her, and that power came with a kind of rush.

Why did it hurt so much, now?

"It wasn't about that," she mumbled, even though it shouldn't matter. She shouldn't _care._

Her eyes stung.

"Oh." Nora's face fell. "Um. Look, if you weren't actually being a jerkface, I'm sorry. It's just that last time you and Blake argued like that..."

Weiss started blinking rapidly. "Would someone turn off the lights already?" she snapped. "I don't care what you thought, I just want to go to sleep."

The four of them glanced at one another. Then, at last, Ren got up and flicked off the lights.

At least in this room, there was no one to see Weiss wipe her eyes in the dark.


	10. Flushed

The first thing she was conscious of was a pounding headache.

"Weiss?"

Why was it so _hot?_ She groaned and flipped the blankets off herself.

"Weiss." A hand touched her shoulder. Probably to shake her awake—but an instant's contact was enough to make her shoot upright and scramble away. Ren stepped back, raising his hands. "I'm sorry to wake you, but I think you have a mission this morning."

Her heart jumped into her throat. "What time is it?!"

"It's only five," Ren assured her. "You have plenty of time."

She squinted at him—awake, alert, and fully dressed. "Why on Remnant aren't you asleep? I'm glad you woke me up, but..."

He glanced over at his partner's bed, where she was currently sprawled on her stomach with all four limbs outstretched. "Don't tell her this, but Nora kicks in her sleep."

Weiss stood up, hastily tidying the sheets and stepping away. "Well, by all means."

"I appreciate the thought, but I think I'll stay up. You should probably get ready."

She started to turn, then stopped when he added, "Oh, and Weiss?"

"Hm?"

"I'd like to apologize. We jumped to unfair conclusions last night. You're our friend, and if you ever need anything, you shouldn't hesitate to ask."

"Oh." All of a sudden Weiss had a horrible suspicion that he'd seen or heard _something_ last night. That he knew about her ridiculous and disproportionate reaction to a few words from people she'd met less than a year ago. It made her skin crawl. "I... appreciate the sentiment," she said, which was true even though she wished he hadn't said anything.

She left JNPR's dorm and re-entered her own. It was, predictably, in total chaos. Blake was still under the covers, though there was quiet grumbling coming from her general vicinity, so she was probably awake. Ruby was pressed against the bathroom door, telling Yang to, "Wait! No, stop turning the water on! You're gonna take the whole hour in there please just let me brush my teeth first!"

Weiss squinted at the mess. Her mind felt slow and hazy—probably a byproduct of how little sleep she'd gotten. She sighed and rubbed her eyes. Right. She'd slept in her clothes, so she should start by getting changed.

Changed! _Drat._ She'd left the old bandages on all night.

And Yang was in the bathroom. Wonderful.

She marched over and pounded on the door. "Yang, get out. I need to change my bandages, I forgot to do it last night."

It opened a second later. "Okay, okay! I'll just go shower in the locker room."

Blake made to follow Weiss into the bathroom. "It's fine," she said shortly. "I can do it myself."

"But—"

Weiss shut the door on whatever Blake's response was going to be. And, after a quick shower, she sat down on the sink and opened the bag of medical supplies.

She'd gotten too used to having someone else do it for her. It hurt a lot more when she was trying to dab at her own side, leaning at an odd angle so that she could actually see what she was doing. She also wasn't nearly as practiced as Blake, but she kept at it, and eventually the whole thing was slathered in the antiseptic. Covering the wound, and the slight pink flush that surrounded it.

Once her wound was dressed and her wings bound, Weiss returned to the room. "Can we—" Blake started to say.

"You should get ready."

Weiss went right for the door, ignoring Blake's flinch and Ruby's worried stare. She went directly to the cafeteria, bolting down a quick breakfast and heading for the cliffs twenty minutes before it was time to be there.

A decision she regretted almost immediately—because their professor was _also_ early.

"Miss Schnee." Professor Goodwitch didn't say anything, didn't give Weiss any sign as obvious as a frown or a raised eyebrow, but somehow her disapproval came through loud and clear.

"My team are on their way," Weiss said, a little defensively. "It's too early for their... everything."

"Well," their professor replied dryly, "perhaps that will motivate the four of you to select your final mission on time next year."

Weiss ducked her head and wished she'd thought to wait on the path to the cliffs instead. Her headache was only getting worse, and she'd forgotten to take anything for it, and she was _still_ standing alone on a clifftop with Professor Goodwitch. Who looked as crisp and alert as ever despite the fact that she must also have been up before dawn.

If she'd hoped it would be less awkward when her team arrived, she'd been fantastically wrong. They were late, for one thing. Not _very_ late, it was only a few minutes past six, but enough for Professor Goodwitch to make a pointed comment about the importance of punctuality and reliability in professional Huntresses. For another, well...

Blake glanced at Weiss. Then, when Weiss looked back, she turned away again. Her shoulders hunched. And Yang noticed, because of course she did, and couldn't seem to decide which one of them she wanted to aim her concerned frown at. Ruby, meanwhile, got that look that meant she was scheming something.

Goodwitch adjusted her glasses and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, _"Teenagers."_ Then she gestured to a small airship that rested at the edge of the cliffs. They climbed inside, with their professor up front in the pilot's seat. She twisted around to look back at them. "I presume you all received the brief?"

Nods all round.

"This will take three days. Have you packed appropriately?"

More nods.

"That's something, at least."

Weiss made an indignant noise that was drowned out by the sound of the engines starting up. She'd deliberately seated herself next to Ruby, so that Blake wouldn't be able to bring up what she'd let slip last night. Unfortunately, that plan had a rather obvious drawback.

"Are you okay?"

Ruby had to practically shout in her ear to make herself heard. Weiss turned her head to glare at her. "Fine," she yelled back.

"Good!" Ruby grinned at her. "Then you can talk later!"

  
"What? That is not at all what I said!"

"Sorry!" Ruby pointed to her ears. "Can't hear you! Engine's too loud!"

"You little—Ugh!"

They landed by the half-circle of mossy stone that had once housed the chess pieces they collected for initiation. It was, well... destroyed. Very destroyed.

"Your doing, if I recall," said Goodwitch. She sounded more exasperated than angry, and with a wave of her riding crop the ruins reassembled themselves.

Ruby jumped to change the subject. "This is to make sure there aren't too many Grimm for initiation, right? Are we supposed to leave the smaller ones alone?"

"An excellent question. No, your mission today is to eliminate any creatures of Grimm that cross your path. The other Professors and I will handle leaving an appropriate threat for first-year students the day before initiation."

Blake frowned. "Then why...?"

"Why are you here?"

"Yes."

"Grimm do not breed," said Professor Goodwitch. "At least, not as far as we know. But their numbers canstillgrow exponentially when left unchecked. Especially since the deeper forest is extremely dangerous, and Grimm from there are drawn towards the school."

"We're killing a bunch of them now so your job isn't awful later?" Yang guessed.

"Precisely." Goodwitch gestured to the northwest. "We'll start off in that direction, then make a spiral. I'll assist you in navigating if necessary, but I'd like you to do your best to manage on your own. This is an extremely common pattern to use for search and destroy missions, and you'll need to master it eventually." She produced a map and a compass, and handed them to Ruby.

"We'll do our best, Professor!" Ruby said, her eyes sliding over to Weiss as she grinned.

"Very well. You may begin. I will walk with you, though I won't intervene unless one of your auras drops to a dangerous level."

As soon as their professor dropped back behind them, Ruby whispered, "Can you, um...?"

Yes. Easily.

"I don't know," Weiss hummed, tapping her chin. "Doesn't our illustrious leader need the practice? What if you need to walk in a spiral when I'm not there?"

Ruby's eyes went wide with betrayal. "No!" Then she grabbed Weiss' arm and gave her that kicked puppy look. "Please...?"

Weiss rolled her eyes. "I'll let you know if we're getting off course."

"Yes!" Ruby pumped her fist and charged off into the woods. Weiss followed, fighting the urge to smile. Until she accidentally bumped into Blake. Then her grin disappeared all on its own, and she returned her gaze to the forest floor.

They walked. Weiss occasionally nudged Ruby one way or the other to keep them on course, and as they went they encountered more and more Grimm. All quite a bit less dangerous than they'd faced during initiation—though their encounter with both a Deathstalker and a Nevermore was probably an outlier. Weiss nursed her headache and tried to ignore what felt an awful lot like a buildup of cotton balls behind her eyes. Her aura declined steadily throughout the day, rather more quickly than usual. When Yang wouldn't stop acting concerned at her, she shrugged it off as the result of poor sleep.

Eventually, it came time to make camp. "Miss Rose," Goodwitch said. "Where do you think we should set up?"

  
Ruby squinted at the forest around them. "Well, we don't want to sit around where Grimm can attack us, right? So, maybe up there?" She pointed to a nearby hilltop that was sheer on three sides. "We can walk up the shallower side, and then we'll only have one direction to defend if we're attacked at night. Unless there are Nevermores, but those could get us anywhere we camp."

Professor Goodwitch nodded in approval.

"We should set up watches too, right? Maybe three shifts?" Ruby glanced down, then picked up four twigs and snapped one. "Short straw sleeps through the night."

Weiss narrowed her eyes. This seemed... suspect.

Sure enough, she watched as Yang studied Ruby's expression, her finger drifting over each of the four twigs before she picked one of the long ones. Blake did the exact same thing. And, when Weiss tried to take one, Ruby surreptitiously shifted them around so that she got the one she hadn't aimed for. Which, shockingly, turned out to be the short one.

"Lucky you," Ruby said, beaming innocently at her. Weiss scowled back, but didn't argue. She really _wasn't_ feeling well, so maybe it would be best to rest and recuperate so that she could take a watch tomorrow night.

Professor Goodwitch left them to their own devices after that, pitching a tent with a wave of her riding crop and disappearing inside, leaving Weiss utterly bereft of excuses to delay the inevitable. Not that she wasn't going to try. She sat down to watch Yang cook sausages over the fire, pointedly ignoring the fact that all three of her teammates were staring at her.

She felt the log she was sitting on shift as someone else's weight settled on the other side.

"Just hear me out," Blake murmured.

"No."

"Weiss."

She made the mistake of turning. Of seeing Blake's face, her eyes welling up as she said, _"Please."_

Weiss turned away, but she made no move to leave. Didn't tell Blake to go away. Just kept on watching the fire.

"I want to tell you about Ilia."

That shocked her into looking right at Blake, both eyebrows raised.

"I don't know where she is now," Blake went on, "but I do know where she was before she joined the White Fang. A prep school in Atlas called Corinthian."

"What? But they don't take... oh."

"Yeah." Blake rested her elbows on her knees. "Ilia can pass for human. She doesn't even need a bow to do it. Her parents wanted a better life for her, so they sent her up to Atlas. They thought that going to school as a human child would give her opportunities they couldn't, and they were right."

"Then... how did she end up in the White Fang?" Ruby asked.

"Let's just say something happened that upset her, so much that she changed in front of people. She joined the White Fang not long after that. This was before Sienna took over. We were about the same age, and there weren't any other kids in the Fang then, so we wound up spending a lot of time together. And, one day, she asked me if I was jealous."

Weiss' stomach churned.

"I didn't understand what she meant. She told me... she told me about the other children at the mines, where she grew up. The kids that used to be her friends when she was too young to go to school. They stopped talking to her after she left for Corinthian. They were angry because she got to be the princess up in Atlas, she could pretend to be human, and they couldn't. And she was angry, too. She started to look down on them. And later, after she left Corinthian... she was jealous of them. Of me.

"Ilia didn't have people screaming insults at her while she was growing up. She wasn't turned away from stores and restaurants and libraries. She didn't have that hatred directed at her. But that didn't mean she avoided it. She was steeped in it, for _years._ Her parents weren't there to tell her those things her friends were saying weren't true. So... she believed them. She started repeating them. But no matter how much she felt like one of them, acted like one of them... deep down, she knew she wasn't."

Blake went quiet. She stared into the fire, her ears tilted back, looking at something far away. "It's hard to live with other people's hate, but sometimes it's not hate that does the most damage." She turned her head to look at Weiss. "Sometimes it's shame. And I'm sorry. I really, really am. But escaping the hate can't make that go away. Looking human won't make that go away. I... don't really know how to make that go away. I wish I did. What I do know is that giving in to that shame, cutting off a part of yourself like that, will only make it stronger. And in the end... you still won't be happy."

  
Weiss took a deep breath. "Are you done?"

Blake nodded.

"Good." She stood up and got the first aid supplies from her pack. "I need to redo the bandage before it gets dark."

"Weiss—"

"What do you want?" she snapped, turning on her heel to glare at Blake. "I heard you out, and you know what? No one's going to touch your ears. So mind your own business."

She stormed off into a clump of trees right at the edge of the hill. This was the side that was the most sheer—a straight drop some forty feet to the forest floor below. Weiss hardly noticed. She seated herself on a fallen log and clenched her hands on her knees.

Weiss wished she'd never met Blake Belladonna, with her stupid ears so whole and beautiful. Of course she'd fight for them. Of course she had no idea why anyone would do any less.

Her hands were rougher than they should have been as she ripped off her jacket and pulled her shirt over her head. Then she started to unwind the bindings. Her nose wrinkled. Slowly, her heart sinking with every layer that peeled away, she exposed the wound—and the smell of rot became unmistakable.

She swore under her breath. The cut was hot to the touch, and she flinched as her fingers brushed against it. It was difficult to see, with the sun already setting and shadows thickening beneath the trees... but she didn't really need to, at that point. Her aura hadn't managed to fight off infection.

_Two days._ If it had happened just two days later—or earlier, for that matter—she could have simply contacted Dr. Marigold and handled this discreetly. Now, if she said anything... they couldn't go back unless they explained the situation to Goodwitch. Not without failing the mission and possibly the whole year along with it. Or at the very least, getting a bad enough grade that it would draw Father's attention.

Not worth the risk—but her teammates wouldn't see it that way. Weiss steeled herself, and went about the business of redressing the wound. More antiseptic cream. More bandages. She could handle this for what, thirty-six hours? Then she could tell the others, and they could go back to Beacon and take care of it properly. In the meantime... well, they couldn't tell Goodwitch what they didn't know.

It was _her_ business, after all. No one else's.


	11. Actions Speak

Despite her whirling thoughts, Weiss managed to sleep through the night. She woke the next morning bright and early, feeling very much like she'd been shot, stuffed, and mounted over a fireplace.

Everything ached. Her sleeping bag was suffocating, but she flinched at the thought of crawling out into the cold. Sweat plastered her bangs to her forehead. Her thoughts came slow and thick through a fevered haze. And, as if to silence any doubt that it was the culprit, the wound in her side throbbed in time with her heartbeat.

This was, admittedly, escalating rather faster than she'd expected. But after a few minutes hiding in her sleeping bag, Weiss pulled herself together, grit her teeth, and faced the world.

When she caught her teammates sneaking concerned glances in her direction, she blamed the night sounds for bad sleep. It was a hot day, and they were soon hard at work slogging through the undergrowth. All their faces were flushed, so Weiss didn't need to make any excuses. And if the wound at her side pained her slightly, well, it wasn't quite healed yet. She would let them know if she pulled any stitches.

They hiked. The sun inched higher into the sky, and within hours all four of them were sweaty and exhausted. They'd already picked off more Grimm than they'd seen yesterday. Or, well, the others had. Weiss was struggling to keep up. Her aura kept dipping sharply every time she used her semblance, so she had to rely heavily on Dust to pull her weight.

She wasn't the only one. Blake took a glancing blow from a Beowolf and dipped into the yellow, drawing a concerned look from Yang. "I'm fine," she muttered. "Just... well, you know I didn't sleep well."

Yang glanced at Weiss and sighed.

Ruby was in her element. She took up the slack, rushing ahead of them to thin the rest of the pack before they could get too close. Weiss gritted her teeth. She hated being useless like this—and Professor Goodwitch was grading them. She needed to do something.

She dashed forward, catching one Beowolf through the eye and another through the throat, but her satisfaction was short-lived. A third exploded out of the undergrowth and knocked her to the ground. She landed on her stomach, panting, staring up at the Grimm as Yang smashed it into smoke.

A hand came down into her field of view. She took it, and came face to face with Blake as she pulled her back to her feet. Weiss jerked away, her ears ringing, and tried to focus on the Grimm. But Ruby cut her off before she could.

"Um, Blake? Weiss? Your auras are really low. Professor? What do we, uh...?"

"Miss Schnee, Miss Belladonna, fall back and assist at range." Professor Goodwitch drew her riding crop. "I will handle the Grimm at the rear, focus your attention towards the front."

Weiss clenched the handle of her rapier until it shook. Their professor joining in the fight couldn't possibly be a good sign—what if she failed them? What if it got back to Father?  
  


The ringing in her ears grew louder. Her head pounded. It was so _hot,_ she could barely think.

She stepped forward, raising Myrtenaster and flicking the chamber to fire. If she could take out enough of them at once, maybe they would be able to take control of the situation. They could still win the fight, and that would have to count for something. Right?

The pressure in her head reached a peak, and then plummeted. Her vision blurred.

Her rapier drew little circles in the air, trembling as fire spread down the blade. She aimed off to Ruby's right, where a cluster of Beowolves were trying to push past her. But when the time came to unleash the attack, her legs wouldn't move.

"Weiss?" Blake's voice sounded tinny and distant.

Myrtenaster slipped through her fingers. She was aware of that—and that all that Dust was about to detonate right at her feet. That with her aura so low, she probably wouldn't survive the explosion. It just... didn't register as important. Her body had quit on her so thoroughly, it couldn't even summon enough adrenaline for fear.

_"Weiss!"_

She felt Blake slam into her side, and then a surge of heat. Saw the bright flash of both their auras shattering. Heard the thud of their bodies hitting the ground. A _pop._ A cry of pain.

The ringing in her ears subsided. She blinked, and nearly screamed when she realized she was halfway on top of Blake, almost nose to nose with her. Worse, her face was pale and drawn with pain.

"Blake!" Yang skidded to a halt beside them and dropped to her knees. "Weiss! Are you okay?"

Blake groaned. "My arm..."

After tackling her head-on, it should have been Weiss' back taking the brunt of the fall—Blake must have twisted them around. Belatedly, she realized she was still lying on top of Blake's injured arm. She struggled to get up, or at least shift her weight, but she could hardly move. It felt like her entire body was made of lead.

Professor Goodwitch entered her field of view and reached for her, and Weiss recoiled.

"She doesn't like strangers touching her," Ruby explained hastily, crowding in beside Goodwitch. Yang took her gently by the shoulders and rolled her off of Blake and onto her side, careful to avoid touching her back.

"Can you rotate the joint at all?" Goodwitch asked Blake.

She hissed in a breath and shook her head.

Their professor felt her shoulder. "It's dislocated. This will hurt a bit."

"Yeah, I know."

While Goodwitch pushed her shoulder back into place, Ruby reached down to help Weiss into a sitting position—but the instant she touched Weiss' bare arm, she stopped trying to lift her. Without warning, she lunged forward and pressed a palm against her forehead.

"What are you doing?"

"What am _I_ doing? How long have you had a fever?"

Weiss cast about for anything that might provide a distraction... but the Grimm were all dead. Probably by Goodwitch's hand, if the foot-long splinters embedded all over the clearing were any indication.

  
"Just today," she hedged.

"You promised!" Yang burst out. "As soon as you thought it was getting infected, you were supposed to tell us!"  
  
"Infected."

All four of them turned to Professor Goodwitch. Their professor, who had very much been listening to this entire conversation. "Miss Xiao Long," she said, her voice deceptively calm. "Kindly explain to me what you meant by that."

Yang said nothing.

Goodwitch rose to her full height, glowering down at their entire team. "Someone is going to explain to me why you deliberately fielded an injured teammate without informing me, _right now,_ or so help me I will fail every single one of you!"

Weiss' stomach turned. She bit her lip, bracing herself—

"We can't," Blake said, hugging her injured arm to her chest.

Their professor's face started to turn an alarming shade of red. "Miss Rose. You are the leader of this team, and as such you are responsible for your teammates. Sending one of them into active combat with what I gather is an _infected wound_ shows an egregious disregard for that responsibility. Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

Ruby's shoulders hunched. "No," she said, her voice very small.

"Ozpin broke a number of usual protocols by bringing you to Beacon this early. Until now, you have proven to be a dedicated student, despite the difficulty of skipping so many years at Signal. I do not believe that risking one of your friends' lives so carelessly is in your character, but if you cannot give me an explanation I will have to recommend that he reverse his decision."

"That's not fair—" Yang started, then cut off when Goodwitch made a slashing motion with her riding crop.

Ruby hung her head. "I'm sorry," she mumbled, sounding absolutely wretched. But even with her life's dream on the line, she didn't say another word. None of them did.

"It's not their fault!" Weiss blurted out. "I told them not to tell anyone!"

"Miss Schnee, do you know how many first-year students have _died_ at this institution?"

Silence.

"Three. Do you know what those three deaths had in common?"

Weiss could guess.

"A compromised aura. Be it from illness, unauthorized fights, or substance abuse. In every case, the student in question did not disclose that fact. That number very nearly became four today."

She flinched—but not as badly as they did. Blake's ears went flat against her head, Yang's fists clenched so tight that they shook, and Ruby was on the verge of tears. Weiss hadn't realized how much it would hurt them when she pushed herself too far. Of course they would have blamed themselves for not saying anything, if she'd... and that wasn't fair.

It hadn't been fair to Penny, either.

"I'm sorry." Weiss hated apologies, and this one was no exception. When was _sorry_ ever good enough?

It wasn't. You had to actually fix the mistake.

"You can't tell anyone this," she said, ignoring her teammates' startled exclamations. "But I need a professor to know, so that this doesn't happen again."

"Is this secret a danger to your classmates?"

"No."

"To you?"

"...No." _Not directly, at least._

"Then it will remain confidential," Goodwitch promised.

"Even from Headmaster Ozpin?"

"Even from him."

Weiss pulled off her jacket and undid the bindings.

If nothing else, she would forever treasure getting to see Professor Goodwitch so startled she dropped her riding crop, took off her glasses, cleaned them, and still hadn't quite gotten around to closing her mouth by the time she put them back on. "I... see," she said. Her expression softened. "That can't have been easy to tell me. Thank you."

Weiss, who had braced herself for shouting, nearly toppled over.

Just like that, Goodwitch was all business again. "Now that your aura is broken, the only thing that will help this infection is rest and antibiotics, and we won't be getting much of either out here. Your mission is canceled, and you will receive a low passing grade. Despite your extraordinary recklessness, you performed well early on and I will take special circumstances into account _just this once."_

Her eyes flashed. "Miss Schnee, I expect you to tell me the next time you cannot complete an assignment for health reasons. Pull anything like this again and I will send you home. Understood?"

Chastened, Weiss hung her head.

"We will return to Beacon immediately," Goodwitch went on. "You and Miss Belladonna will proceed to the infirmary for treatment."

"No!" And then, before Goodwitch could explode again, "I have my own doctor."

Goodwitch's eyes narrowed. "This doctor wouldn't happen to live in Atlas, would he?"

"He'll make the trip if I call him." Weiss had no idea what Father had on Heinrich Marigold, but it was enough that he was certain he'd keep her secret. A housecall wasn't that big of a request, by comparison.

"Call now. If he is not in Vale within an hour of our arrival, you _will_ go to the infirmary. Professor Peach will see to your injury, and I will personally ensure that she respects your privacy. Is that understood?"

Weiss nodded.

"Good. And unless you have an aversion to the infirmary as well, Miss Belladonna—"

"I'll go," Blake said, ducking her head in embarrassment.

The hike back to the airship was quiet. Weiss struggled to keep up, as sweat beaded on her forehead and her body started to shake. Yang stepped up beside her, and wordlessly tugged Weiss' arm over her shoulders, half-carrying her the rest of the way. All three of them hovered over her while the airship took off. Every so often, Ruby would reach out to feel her forehead. She didn't have the heart to push her away.

She tried not to look at Blake. Because every time she did, she saw the sling and remembered what she'd done. The way she'd twisted to make sure Weiss didn't land on her back. No matter how much she thought about it, she could think of no other explanation. Blake had risked breaking an arm to protect her wings. Which was insane, and ridiculous, and _stupid,_ and for some reason it made her want to cry.

Weiss blamed the fever.


	12. I Burn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick content warning for unwanted but non-sexual touching of faunus traits.

In the end, Weiss did actually go to the infirmary. Doctor Marigold met her there—looking rather harried with his glasses askew and his suit rumpled. Probably because he'd just come from a nine hour flight. She wondered what he'd done that Father had _this_ much blackmail on him.

"Miss Schnee! It's a pleasure to see you again. Though I must admit that this is all... very irregular." He reached a door in the middle of the hall and held it open for her. "The staff here have been kind enough to let me borrow the room for a while."

Inside was nice. Cozy, even. There were murals on the walls, abstract images that reminded her of the trees in Forever Fall. Lots of cotton swabs and syringes and instruments of all sorts hung on the walls. An antiseptic smell burned her nose.

"Why don't you have a seat?" Marigold suggested. He adjusted his glasses and smiled. "I'll admit, all the cloak and dagger has me quite curious."

"Right." Weiss clasped her hands in her lap. Hairs bristled on the back of her neck, and she kept glancing at the door. She'd been telling the truth when she said she'd already had treatment from Doctor Marigold, but it hadn't happened often. She'd been uncomfortable in hospital settings ever since she was a child, and had avoided them whenever she could.

Marigold cleared his throat awkwardly. "Well, ah, can you tell me about your symptoms? I assume this is more than a wellness checkup."

"I have a cut," Weiss said. "It's gotten infected, I just—" She pressed a hand to her forehead and wrinkled her nose. Her brow was damp with sweat. "There's a reason why I couldn't go to the staff here."

Why was her heart beating so fast? Doctor Marigold was as safe as it was possible to get. Father had something on him, and was confident he wouldn't talk. And Father would never risk the world finding out about her.

She still couldn't say it. "It's probably easier if I show you."

And, really, she'd already done this twice. Her team especially had been complete wild cards—there had been nothing compelling them to be silent. There still wasn't. Except that they'd held their ground before an irate Professor Goodwitch for her, and Doctor Marigold was nearly a stranger.

"Let's start with the basics," Marigold suggested, when she didn't move. "I need to check your temperature anyway, so why don't I do that while you get ready to show me... whatever this is."

Weiss nodded, her shoulders slumping in relief.

Marigold poked a thermometer under her tongue, then frowned at the result. "Not bad," he mused. "Not good, either, but you're certainly not dying. My concern is more that your temperature has risen this much despite an activated aura. How have you been sleeping?"

It went on like that for a while. Clinical, impersonal, and soothing in its own way. Eventually Doctor Marigold stood back, clapped his hands, and said, "Well, that's about all I can do without seeing the injury. Shall we?"

If she wanted them gone, she had to do this eventually. He was polite and professional. It would be fine. Before she could think about it too much, Weiss unwound the bindings and pulled up her undershirt up to reveal the long slash in her side. But Doctor Marigold was not paying attention.

"My word," he muttered, walking around her to get a better look. "This would certainly be awkward to explain to the public." He snorted. "I'd never have pegged Jacques as the type to go for that sort of thing, but I suppose we all have our vices."

Her wings were not sensitive. The nerves were damaged enough that she couldn't feel light touches on them, but she could feel pressure... and temperature.

His hands were cold.

"What are you doing?" she burst out, whirling around and grimacing as her left wing started to cramp.

Marigold hummed thoughtfully. "They're deformed. Is that from birth?"

"It's from binding them," Weiss said. She turned with him as he tried to circle around her again, keeping her body between him and her wings.

"No wonder Jacques is so keen to get rid of them." Marigold frowned, inspecting the joints critically from behind his glasses. "Can't believe he left it this long. Look at the size of that bone, there—"

He reached out again, and Weiss flinched away.

"Come now, I'm not about to hit you."

"I'm not here for them." She gestured at her cut. "I'm here for this."

"Yes," he said, slow and deliberate, "but unless you want me to take a second trip all the way to Vale for a consultation, I'll need to examine your wings as well. Surgery is a lot more complicated than lopping them off, you know."

He tapped his chin, and his voice sped up and dropped to a mutter, as if he was talking mostly to himself. "A photograph would be best, but I doubt Jacques will appreciate me keeping any... evidence. Some measurements will have to do."

Weiss bristled. "That's not what I came here for," she insisted.

"I suppose we can take care of that first, if you're still skittish."

"I'm not skittish."

Marigold ignored that. He unwrapped the bandage and, after a brief examination, started tut-tutting about how she'd bungled the stitches. Several painful minutes were spent removing and redoing them, and by the time it was over Weiss didn't think they looked much neater than Blake's. He then redressed the wound and wrote her a prescription for a course of antibiotics.

"Make sure you take all of them," he warned. "You'll stop showing symptoms, and you'll assume you're all better, and if you don't keep up with the rest of the treatment you'll come down with a new infection that's resistant to antibiotics. We don't want that, do we?"

Weiss glared at him.

"On to those wings of yours. I'll need you to stand still for this."

She stood there, clenching her jaw as the doctor circled around her and started measuring her wings. The right one twitched and cramped the moment he touched it, and he clucked his tongue irritably. "I told you—"

"I can't help it," she snapped.

"There's no need for that." The tape measure tightened around the base of her wing. "You're being rather ungrateful, you know."

"Excuse me?"  
  


"I'm doing you and your Father an enormous favor, agreeing to this. For that matter, he's been far kinder to you than most men in his position would. It would have been easier and safer to leave you with your mother, whoever she was, and forget all about you. Instead, he raised you like a real daughter. He even set up this surgery for you. I know it's difficult for you to understand, but it's for your own good. Acting like a brat just because it frightens you is doing a good man a great disservice."

It wasn't until she heard the sound of a glass cabinet shattering that Weiss realized she'd slapped the tape measure out of his hand. Marigold cringed away from her, wide-eyed, clutching his clipboard of measurements to his chest like a shield.

"My mother is Willow Schnee," she bit out. "And cutting off my wings is _my_ choice."

His nostrils flared. "Well," he spluttered, as she scrambled to put the bindings and jacket back on. "It won't do you much good if you can't learn to control these irrational outbursts."

A wordless snarl ripped its way out of her throat. She turned on her heel and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her with enough force that the knob came loose in her hand. And, definitively, losing the argument.

"Hey!" Ruby approached her cautiously. Yang was just behind her, mirroring her concern. "What happened? Are you okay?"

Weiss didn't answer. She probably couldn't have even if her life had depended on it.

Yang's eyes widened as she spotted something over Weiss' shoulder. "Guys," she blurted, "Now isn't a—"

"Weiss!"

Weiss whirled around, and came face to face with Nora. She was holding an enormous plate of pancakes that spelled out _We're Sorry!_ in chocolate chips, and bouncing up and down in nervous excitement. "We, um, we talked to your team," she said. "And..."

"We'd like to apologize for Thursday night," Pyrrha finished. "It was wrong of us to make assumptions."

Jaune grinned, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. "We, uh, weren't sure what food you'd like, so Ren just sorta did what he does best."

A solemn nod from Ren.

"I'm so glad you decided I deserve an apology," Weiss said, without inflection. "As soon as you checked with everyone else to make sure it wasn't my fault to begin with."

  
Jaune's eyes went wide with alarm. "That's not what we—we just weren't sure what was going on, and obviously guessing wasn't getting us anywhere, so..."

"Not that they told us anything!" Pyrrha added hastily.

"Yeah!" agreed Nora. "Just that Blake was okay and you were disagreeing about something personal."

Ren's brow furrowed. "Weiss? Can you hear us?"

He reached out. Innocently, of course—probably to put a hand on her shoulder, because apparently some people found that reassuring. And remembered, just too late to abort the gesture, what had happened when he shook her awake on Friday morning.

  
Weiss felt phantom fingers on her wings and shoved him roughly away. He knocked into Nora, and the plate she was holding went flying. Shattered ceramic and pancakes flew in all directions.

There was a shocked silence. One that Weiss knew she was supposed to fill with an apology.

To hell with apologies. Everyone wanted an animal, didn't they? Maybe it was time she gave them one.

She shoved Ren again. But this time he wasn't taken by surprise, and she was still weak and feverish and missing her aura. He barely moved. She would have tried a third time, but Nora stepped in front of her before she made contact and pushed her back.

Yang caught her upper arm before she could fall. There were raised voices, from her and Nora both, but Weiss couldn't make out the words. She wrenched free and bolted, because that was what animals did when they didn't know what else to do.

Weiss shouldered her way into the room and pressed her back against the door, breathing fast and harsh. And maybe she would have been okay, maybe she could have pulled herself together if she'd had just a _second_ alone.

Blake was already inside, wearing her right arm in a brand new sling. As if that wasn't enough, Yang and Ruby soon tumbled into the room behind her. They must have chased her all the way from the infirmary.

"Weiss?"

People kept saying her name like that. Like they were expecting her to explode. And they were right, and she _hated_ it, and the more she hated the more she felt that something deep inside her was ticking down.

"Let's go," Weiss said. "To Vale. Find Ilia." She could feel Yang and Ruby staring at her, their concern burning at the back of her neck.

Blake looked at the floor. "Um. About that."

_Say it,_ Weiss thought. _Go on. Say you don't want to. I dare you._

"I talked to Ozpin. Just now, after I left the infirmary. I didn't mention anything about you, but I told him I recognized Ilia from Penny's description, and who she is, and where I think she might be hiding. Everything I know, and... how I know it."

"You—" The sudden shift of gears left Weiss dizzy. "You told him? About—about being one of _them?"_

"Yeah." Blake let out a shaky sigh. "Which, um. He... already knew?"

_"What?!"_

Wincing a little at the volume, Blake managed a wry grin. "My thoughts exactly. He also said something about not keeping anything 'truly sensitive' in writing, which is... terrifying, but I'm mostly just glad I didn't get thrown out of Beacon. Or arrested."

"But... why?"

Blake looked up, her ears half-perked. "Because I care more about helping you than keeping secrets."

"Right. You're just trying to help, no ulterior motives whatsoever!"

Her face fell. "I am, Weiss. I know you don't trust me, and you don't want to hear what I'm saying, but I'm just worried about you. This... this thing you're about to do, it's not something you can take back."

Enough. _Enough._

"I know you think you need to get rid of them to be happy, but you don't!"

She couldn't do this anymore. She couldn't keep pretending she had a handle on her impulses when _clearly_ she didn't. If she started hitting Blake, eventually she'd have to hit back. Eventually she'd have to—

"Stop!"

  
Yang stepped between them, her hands held out.

Blake stared at her with her ears pinned back. "What? You can't seriously be okay with this!"

"I'm not." Yang let her arms fall to her sides. "And I know this is awful for you in a way I'm never going to understand, but... I'm sorry Blake, it's still not about you. It's her body." She managed a weak grin. "Besides, I don't exactly have a leg to stand on, telling someone else not to get rid of bits that make them miserable."

"If you're also somehow a faunus," Weiss said, feeling slightly faint, "I will have some sort of cardiac event, and I _will_ blame you for my death and haunt you for the rest of your natural existence. Just so you're aware."

Yang chuckled nervously. "Well, uh... it's not that." She hesitated, tension rising until Ruby grabbed her hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back, took a deep breath, and said, "I'm trans."

"Oh." Weiss remembered hearing about this once before—when Doctor Marigold's now-niece had caused the scandal of the decade by running off to Mantle to be a Huntress. She'd been briefly amused that someone else had completely overshadowed Winter's defection to the military in the eyes of everyone but Father, and hadn't thought about it since.

She had, at the very least, been thrown for a loop so thoroughly that the urge to snap at someone had receded. "I don't know what I'm supposed to say," she admitted.

"You don't have to make a big thing out of it," Yang said. "I'd rather you didn't, honestly. I'm still just me. And, uh, I'm about to talk about a lot of personal stuff. Stuff that I hate strangers asking me about out of the blue, so like... if you meet somebody else who's trans, don't do that."

Weiss nodded slowly.

"Cool." Yang took another breath. "So... I guess what I'm trying to say is, I get not being happy with your body."

Blake scowled. "Gender and species aren't the same thing, Yang."

"No, they're not." Yang flashed her a smile. "I'm getting there, I promise." She plunked herself down on Blake's bunk and patted the spaces beside her. With a little roll of her eyes, Blake curled up on one side, while Ruby took the other. Weiss sat on her own bed.

"The thing is... ever since I was a kid, I had everyone around me telling me there was nothing wrong with the body I was born with. I had my dad getting so excited when I told him I wanted to learn to fight like he did, telling me I was gonna grow up big and strong just like him.

"And our mom. Summer..." Yang faltered, and Ruby hugged her around the middle. "Whenever I heard something awful at school, or on the holoscreen, she always told me it was okay. That I could be whoever I was, a—a little boy with long hair, or... someone else." She swallowed hard. "I think she knew. At least, she tried so hard to make sure I never thought I was wrong for what I liked, or how I dressed, or what I wanted to look like, so... I like to think she did, and she was just waiting for me."

Weiss tucked her arms around her stomach. "That sounds nice," she grumbled, and hated herself for it. She was so _tired_ of envy.

"It wasn't all nice. Our parents were, and Uncle Qrow, and Ruby was super excited to have a sister—"

"Yeah!"

"—but a lot of people thought I shouldn't be a woman. They told me I could just be a feminine man, and that's the thing. I _know_ there's nothing wrong with that. It would be easier if I was, a lot of people would prefer it, but I'm just not. They can talk all they want, but they can't change what's true.

"That's the difference, I think. Because... I could be wrong, but... I'm guessing people have been telling you that you shouldn't be a faunus for a long time."

Weiss set her jaw, and said nothing.

"In the end, they're you're wings. You decide what happens to them. But first, you should know. Nnot just up here—" she tapped her temple, "—but down here." She poked herself in the gut. "There's nothing wrong with them. Nothing. That's a lie the world told you. They don't make you wrong, they don't make you less, they're a part of you and that makes them beautiful."

Weiss' hands clenched into fists. Her shoulders started to shake.

"When you know that? Really feel it, deep down? You'll know what you want. It'll be so obvious how you're supposed to be, you'll have no idea why everyone else can't see it. And when you do... whatever that is, we'll listen. Okay?"

"I can't."

Blake's face fell. "I'm sorry if it felt like I was trying to force you into something. I... I promise I won't say anything right now, okay? Not until I hear you out."

"No. That's not—I meant that what I want is impossible."

Ruby smiled at her, undaunted as usual by that word, _impossible._ "You can still say it. If you want."

Weiss choked on dusty childhood memories. The ones where nothing hurt, and nothing was numb, and an old man called her Engel. The faded reminders she'd pushed away for so long, because they only ever made her feel empty.

Except they didn't, this time. This time, they made her angry.

"I want them the way they were supposed to be," she spat. "But it's too late for that, and I'd rather have nothing than all this dead weight. They're useless and broken and they hurt all the time, and you can lie to me all you want, Yang, but I know they're disgusting. Stop comparing them to everyone else's traits like you haven't noticed they grew all wrong!"

She lurched to her feet and started to pace. Her wings reacted to her agitation like they always did—a familiar lurch as they tried to flare out, to protect her, and then a cramp that made her double over in pain. She whirled on her teammates, glaring. Ruby flinched, Yang reached out instinctively... and Blake glared right back.

"How do you know?"

"Excuse me?"

"How do you know it's too late?" Blake lifted her chin in challenge. "You've been tying them down all year. I bet you haven't let them breathe for more than an hour at a time since you got here. Do you know what would happen if you actually tried to take care of them?"

"Oh, of _course!_ How haven't I thought of that already! It's not as if every second they're uncovered is a second someone might see and tell the entire world I'm a bastard who can't inherit the company."

"Then I guess it's a question of whether or not you're willing to take some risks."

Weiss stared at her. "That's—this might not even _work!"_

"It might not," Blake admitted. "I'm not going to pretend to be neutral about this, because I'm not, but I won't lie to you either. I have no idea if all that damage is reversible. But if you don't try, I know it's not going to get better."

"Fantastic."

Somehow, against all logic, Ruby kept smiling. "Whatever happens, we're with you."

Two options. She could them her mind was already made up, and ask them to drop it—and even Blake seemed like she might finally get the message this time. Then it was just a matter of getting through the last few weeks, and of gritting her teeth through any interactions with Doctor Marigold. Despite all the complications she'd had to deal with, she knew she could handle it. She could do the smart, cool-headed, sensible thing.

Or she could play with fire, just to see what would happen.

The rage of her twisted wings settled somewhere in the pit of Weiss' stomach, curling up there like a hot coal. She decided she rather liked being angry.

She decided she was sick of being sensible.

She decided she was in a fire starting mood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may have projected a little bit of repressed bitterness left over from a shitty top surgery consultation onto Doctor Marigold here. Just, you know, a very small amount that is not making me twitchy at all.
> 
> I will also mention that, RE: Yang in this chapter, I am trans myself but transmasc and transfemme folks often have very different experiences so... if I did a dumb, feel free to let me know! That goes for other stuff, too, especially since like... I've been trying to reference lots of different ways real life humans are awful to one another when writing about the faunus, some of which I've never been on the receiving end of.


	13. Take it Out

Weiss' resolve lasted exactly as long as it took for her to get in and out of the shower. But standing there, not-quite-all-the-way dressed with her hand on the bathroom doorknob, about to step outside with her wings hanging out in the open...

Well. She was starting to feel more than a little bit insane.

She took a deep breath. This was ridiculous—it wasn't as though she was about to parade around in front of the entire school. Ruby had promised to lock the door. Her teammates already knew.

What if they said something?

Which was even _more_ ridiculous. Blake had been showing off her ears for a week now and none of their friends had said anything negative. They wouldn't.

Except that her wings weren't like Blake's ears, were they? They were all twisted up and wrong, and—and—

_And isn't your Father such a good man, for helping you get rid of them?_

The door hit the wall with a _bang_ that made Blake jump a foot in the air and crack the back of her head against the bottom of Yang's bunk. Weiss stepped out, and tried not to wince too obviously when her wings cramped. It wasn't that her teammates were _staring,_ exactly, but they were looking at her and she could feel the open air on her wings, and something about that combination made her want to pick a fight.

"Uh, Weiss?" Ruby said tentatively. "Are you... okay?"

It felt like there was a brand searing her insides. Weiss smiled—with, judging by her teammates' reactions, too many teeth. "Never better."

"That's... good?"

"So." Yang clapped her hands together. "What now?"

"Anybody have any more world-shattering secrets?" Ruby asked, in playful tones that were definitely tempting fate.

Yang and Blake glanced at one another.

Ruby blanched. "Wha—no, that was a joke, please I can't take any more yelling!"

"Easy there," Yang chuckled. Then she looked at Blake again, and received a nod. "It's not bad, promise. And not, like, world-shattering?" Her face went red. "I mean, not that it's not—I mean, _I_ think it's world shattering but you probably won't—!"

Blake came to her rescue. "We're together."

"Oh!" Ruby relaxed immediately. "You're right, that's not world-shattering at all."

"Should I be offended?" Blake wondered, with an arched eyebrow.

"Neither of you are the least bit subtle," Weiss pointed out. _Also, I almost tripped over you outside the ballroom._ Which she wasn't going to mention, because it had been weird and embarrassing and _nothing else._

Blake turned slightly pink. _"Anyway,"_ she said, "I think the 'what do we do now' question was for you, Weiss."

"Oh." She folded her arms and started drumming her fingers on her wrist. "I don't know. I've been binding them practically since I learned to walk, I've never..."

"I can pick up some books about that," Yang offered. "I've been planning to read up on faunus stuff anyway. I mean, not _specifically_ wing care, but it probably won't stick out all that much in with everything else."

"I'm going with you." Weiss said it so abruptly that her team started staring at her again. Her skin crawled. She just... needed a break from this break. That was all. Besides, she wasn't about to sit around doing nothing while Yang went to the library.

Of course, as soon as she said she was going it turned into a team outing. "Just so you all know," Blake warned, "There's going to be a lot of sketchy information in there."

Ruby's face fell. "Even in Beacon's library?"

"It's probably better than average, but... yes."

"Information you disagree with is not necessarily 'sketchy,'" Weiss said.

Blake picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder, massaging her temples with one hand as she walked towards the door. "I wouldn't exactly call it _information."_

* * *

_Anthrophilic faunus fall into two categories, depending on their animal traits. The first category, which I will call prey-type anthrophiles for the sake of simplicity, instinctively seek out a dominant and intelligent human partner to provide them with protection and guidance. This type includes species such as sheep, deer, and rabbit faunus. On the other hand, predator-type anthropihles like foxes, hyenas, or bears are attracted to humans they see as weak and submissive, and seek to hunt and conquer them._

Weiss stared despondently at the page in front of her. "What did I just read?"

Blake glanced at the cover of the book and groaned. "Rye Blanche. He has a _thing_ about interspecies relationships, it's probably better to just—"

"Of course, true predatory anthrophiles are rare," Weiss read aloud. "For instance, many feline faunus appear to be predator-type at first glance, while ultimately desiring the same submissive role as their domestic counterparts."

Yang leaned forward, glanced at the first paragraph upside-down, and gagged. "Why does this guy's textbook read like he's trying to decide who to harass at a bar?"

Ruby's nose wrinkled. "And what even is an anthrophile?"

"Scary made-up word for being attracted to humans sometimes," Blake said, without inflection.

Did that make Weiss an anthrophile? She _had_ liked Neptune, sort of, for a little while. Except that hadn't actually gone anywhere. Was it because he was the wrong kind of human? "Which am I?" she wondered aloud. It would be obvious if she were a hawk or a dove, but she was... what? Some sort of sea bird, probably, if her craving for fish was any indication. That fit the predator model, didn't it? Did that mean deep down she wanted to _eat_ him or something?!

"Please don't worry about it." Blake pinched the bridge of her nose and flicked the book shut. "Blanche got famous a decade ago for a study saying that female faunus go into uncontrollable heats. Five years later, someone had the bright idea to redo the experiment, this time with a human control group. It turned out human cis women _also_ have monthly cycles that affect libido. He essentially spent five thousand lien in grants proving that faunus get periods. I don't understand how he isn't a complete laughing stock."

Yang buried her face in her hands. "This sucks. Mine is barely better, she keeps going on about how important discipline and training are." She flipped to the back cover to stick her tongue out at the author's photo, then swore viciously under her breath. "She runs an _orphanage?_ Those poor kids..."

Weiss wasn't listening.

Maybe she wasn't an anthrophile? That could explain why her feelings towards Neptune had been so muted. She tried picturing Sun instead. He was objectively very nice to look at, but... no. There was no real heat there, either. And then, purely because she was right there in front of her, Yang popped into her head. Which was reassuring, in its own way, because the last thing she wanted to do was 'conquer' Yang—

Blood rushed to her face.

"Hey, Weiss?" Yang leaned across the table again, her brow furrowed in concern. Her face was _much_ too close. "Are you okay?"

"Fine!" she blurted, even though that was a total lie and she was not remotely fine. Especially not when Blake reached out to grip her hand. Her ears flicked, and she wore an easy smile, so _why_ was Weiss now wondering if she'd ever pinned Yang down? Did this make her one of those predatory anthrophiles? Was that why she got so jealous and angry all the time? Or was she one of the false ones, the ones that started out wanting to be a hunter and then—she didn't like that, she didn't want to be someone's pet—!"

"Easy." Blake squeezed her hand. "Blanche is just an idiot, I promise. His only source for any of this is a collection of case studies, and his defense against all the faunus who've come out to say this _doesn't_ describe them is to claim that they're lying. None of these categories really mean anything."

"Then why was it published?"

"Because lots of humans want to read about how faunus secretly like to be treated terribly," Blake said, scowling.

"Ugh."

Before her frustration could get past a simmer, Ruby distracted her by jumping out of her chair and making a grab for the large heap of books they'd stacked at the end of the table. "Hey, look!" She pulled out a dusty hardcover that was much smaller than the others, titled simply, _Faunus Anatomy._ But that wasn't what Ruby was pointing at. Her finger tapped frantically against the author, a Doctor P. Polendina.

Wait.

"Polendina? As in—?"

"I have no idea!" Ruby took a picture with her scroll. "I'll have to show it to Penny and find out!"

Blake winced, her ears drawing back. She lifted the cover gingerly, as if half-expecting to find a spider inside. Then her eyes widened. She started flipping pages, her ears perking up and twitching in excitement.

"What?" Weiss demanded, as Yang crowded in on Blake's other side. "What is it?"

Blake flipped the book around and slid it towards Weiss. "Look at this!"

There was a detailed drawing of a feline ear, just like Blake's. Alongside it were careful sketches of inner structures, annotated to label each part of the ear, and notes on common ailments. How to protect against infection, loud noises, frostbite. Weiss frowned. Half the remedies she read were labeled as being anecdotallysupported. "This... doesn't seem very scientific."

Blake turned the page and shook her head. "No, it is! Look."

An annotation under a set of gills read, _Anecdotal evidence that gills increase susceptibility to Dust Lung when only the nose and mouth are covered while mining._ And then, just underneath it, _Found three volunteers to try out the new ventilator. Far from statistically sound, unfortunately, but all three had symptoms when we started, and all three improved. See appendix C, page 29 for details._

"There are tests, too," Blake said, brushing her fingers over a page that illustrated a pair of delicate fins. "And the drawings, but... it's like someone gathered everything they could find about faunus healthcare in one place." She grinned. "It's basically a compendium of all the stuff your parents tell you."

And then she turned another page, and Weiss came face to face with an illustration of a young woman standing with wings spread. Smaller sketches were scattered to either side, showing her posing with them curved over her shoulders and folded against her back. There were more on the next page. An older man this time, blocked out roughly, details abandoned in favor of catching the motion of his flight.

Sentences jumped out at her. _Conditioner in the feathers helps avoid splitting. Here's how to stitch together a poncho that will keep your wings dry. Never bind them until they're fully grown._

Why didn't she know any of this?

"I'm checking this one out," Blake decided. There were murmurs of agreement Weiss barely registered.

That was such a stupid question. She knew why. It was what your _parents_ told you.

She noticed that her teammates were looking at her. Noticed, but did not care. Her eyes were fixed on the image of a man in flight. Those perfect gestures, blurring into a mess of light and shadow as her blood turned to molten lead.

Her hand moved. It wasn't a real choice—it was this, or come apart at the seams. The sound of tearing paper filled her ears, drowning out the sound of her teammates shouting things that didn't matter. What mattered was that the flying man was gone. The young woman with russet-brown feathers was gone. Those loving diagrams of how parts of her would fit together if they hadn't gotten twisted were _gone._

Blake snatched the book out of harm's reach, and Weiss let her. The next page had been about bat wings, and she didn't care. The pressure inside had eased a little. She was simmering rather than boiling. It was enough to crush the torn pages in her fists.

"What are you doing?" Blake demanded. And then, when Weiss started tearing up the pages she'd ripped out, "Stop!"

She was breathing hard, and didn't know why. Yang took the scraps of paper from her hands, gently smoothing them out over the tabletop. A piece showed the flying man's wingtip. Another was a drawing of a feather, webbed over in wrinkles from being crumpled.

"Why would you do that?" It probably hadn't been meant as an accusation—but Blake was upset as well as confused, and it certainly felt like one.

"I don't know!" Weiss snapped. Her throat tightened. She picked up one of the pieces. _After prolonged binding, blood flow to the wings can be restored by—_

The rest of it was gone.

"Hey," said Ruby, seeing the look on her face. "It's okay."

"Nobody told me this." Weiss clenched and unclenched her hands. "Nobody told me, and now I can't even _read_ it—!"

"Yes, you can!" Ruby grabbed her bag and opened one of the side-pockets, gathering the scraps of paper and tucking them inside. "Here's what we're gonna do. It's getting late, so we'll go grab your meds and head back to the dorm to get some sleep. Then tomorrow we can put the pieces back together, just like a jigsaw puzzle! Oh, and we should order another copy of the book and swap it out with this one as soon as we can. Sound good?"

Weiss couldn't speak. So she nodded, and looked away before she could see too much of any of their expressions. They weren't angry, but the softness there was much harder to look at.

* * *

When it came time to put together the pieces of Doctor Polendina's book, Weiss expected a grueling test of endurance.

Instead, she slept in until almost noon and woke lying comfortably on her stomach, her wings bare under the blankets. Yang brought them a tray piled high with breakfast foods, and the four of them gathered on the floor around the pile of paper scraps. Ruby stuck a piece of tape to her face to give herself a pig nose. Blake laughed so hard she accidentally blew some of her work away and had to redo it.

There was something satisfying about putting broken things back together, even though Weiss was the one who'd torn them up in the first place. She got focused on the task at hand, she forgot for long stretches that her wings were still out in the open—and every time she remembered, the anxious lurch of her heart was a little less overwhelming. After a while, they were just sort of... there. A tiny irritation at the edge of her attention, one she could ignore with a little effort.

As they worked their way through page after page, they chatted. Mostly aimlessly, at least at first—just filling the room with soothing noise. Near the end of the last page, though, Yang cleared her throat. "Hey, so... on Tuesday, Ruby and I are heading home to Patch for a few days before the festival," Yang said. "Do either of you guys want to come?"

Blake's ears perked up. Then she glanced at Weiss, and didn't say anything.

"No, thank you."

"You're not—I mean... are you going back to Atlas?" Yang made a painfully bad attempt not to look like she was dreading a yes.

"I'll be spending the time at Beacon." Weiss liked it here. She didn't want to go home, and she didn't want to go to Patch and have to deal with meeting Ruby and Yang's father. She'd rather liked waking up today without the bindings on, and she wouldn't feel comfortable doing that in a house she was sharing with a stranger.

"I'll stay, too," said Blake.

Weiss rolled her eyes. "For the record, I am perfectly capable of surviving a few days by myself. Go, you obviously want to."

"It just doesn't feel right leaving you here alone." Blake's ears, which had been drooping lower and lower, suddenly perked up. "Besides, I remember what you said yesterday, about not having anyone to explain all those things to you. I might not be able to help with specifics, like how to take care of your wings, but we have the pages for that and I'd be happy to just... talk."

Her stomach lurched. Weiss opened her mouth, and found that she couldn't bring herself to refuse. "That... yes. I would like that."

Blake shot an apologetic look at Yang, who waved it off. "Nah, you're right. Just make sure she actually takes the antibiotics."

"Wha—I know how to take medication, _Yang."_

"So you won't stop as soon as your symptoms go away instead of finishing the whole course?"

"Obviously!"

"And you _definitely_ won't pick a fight with Cardin or Nora or Professor Goodwitch while you're still healing."

Weiss flushed. "What on Remnant do you expect me to do, Xiao Long?!"

"Literally all of that?"

The slight scuffle that then broke out meant they spent at least an extra half hour working on the pages. But by the time dinner rolled around, they had a collection of wrinkled, taped-together information about faunus wings. Weiss flipped through them, searching for—there!

_After prolonged binding, blood flow to the wings can be restored by massaging them. Gentle stretches also help keep the joints from stiffening._ There was another section on feather care, which mentioned that ingrown feathers often had to be removed before new, healthy ones could grow in.

Reluctantly, she explained this to her team.

Ruby was all enthusiasm. "We can totally do that!"

Yang, glancing at Weiss' face, hastily added, "If that's okay?"

"I don't know." Weiss remembered how it had felt when clammy fingers brushed against her wings, and shivered.

"We don't have to decide now," Blake assured her. "This is probably going to take more than one person, and Yang and Ruby are going to Patch soon. So maybe we'll talk about it again after they get back?"

She gritted her teeth. "No. Let's do it tomorrow."

Her teammates exchanged wide-eyed glances. "If you're sure," Yang said. "We're happy to help however we can."

Weiss was not sure. She was, if she was being entirely honest, _terrified._ But when she looked down at the torn-up pages in her hands, the knowledge that had been kept out of her reach for so long... she felt something close enough to pass for certainty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to Clockwerkchaos for the idea that Blake has tried to read books about faunus and been, ahem, disappointed, to use the understatement of a century.


	14. Feeling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for emotional abuse—feel free to head to the first linebreak to skip it.

A new day dawned. Warm sunlight filtered through the gap in the curtains, which were drawn against prying eyes. Weiss sat on the edge of her bed with her wings out, sipping on a cup of soothing tea that Blake had brought her. Soft classical music played from Ruby's scroll for probably the first time since its purchase. Yang kept fussing with a pile of pillows on Weiss' bed, arranging them just so.

They were clearly bending over backwards to calm her down, and it was almost working. Almost. Until her scroll started to vibrate. Weiss snatched it off the nightstand, knowing even as she opened it what she would see.

"Is that...?" Ruby trailed off.

"My Father." There wasn't time to cover her wings before she picked up. "Can you give me a moment?"

Her teammates exchanged reluctant glances.

Weiss rolled her eyes in fond exasperation. "It's just a scroll call, I'll be _fine._ Honestly."

They left her alone in the room, with the steady buzzing of the scroll grating at her ears. Weiss took a steadying breath and answered on the last ring.

"Took you long enough."

"I had to leave the room," she lied, swallowing past a guilty lump in her throat.

"Do you know what I'm looking at right now?"

She could guess. "My transcripts."

"Care to explain what happened on your practical evaluation?"

"We had to leave before it was finished. There was a medical emergency, one of my teammates dislocated—"

"Don't lie to me," he snapped. "I spoke to Doctor Marigold. I know you were the problem."

Shame curdled in the pit of her stomach. She'd always hated scrambling to cover her failures. "I did well on the written exams. Combined, it's more than enough to—"

"More than enough?" An incredulous scoff. "By whose standard? I have difficulty imagining that Beacon really is as lax as you seem to believe. Do you think your sister would be a specialist now if she called a botched mission _good enough?"_

"No," she gritted out.

"Your brother is intelligent, reliable, and rational. Why should I entrust the future of my company to you when you insist on giving me nothing but excuses?"

Weiss had long since learned by trial and error that there was no right answer to this question. She said nothing.

He let the silence hang for a moment before he said, "This is all beside the point. I didn't call about your abysmal performance."

Her heart leaped into her throat. Did he know she'd told her team? No, that was ridiculous, she had to _stop_ that before she let something slip and he really did find out.

"You showed those... _things_ to Doctor Marigold."

Relief flooded her. "Yes." A stony silence followed. And, like an idiot, she blundered into it. "I had to. I have a cut he couldn't look at with the bindings on, and I thought since we had to tell him eventually—"

"You thought. I see. In all that thinking, did it ever occur to you to call and ask me?"

"I had to do it," she insisted. "I had an infection and I needed a doctor. If you wanted me to tell you afterwards, fine, but I didn't have a choice."

"I suppose you didn't have a choice when you attacked the man, either?"

Her stomach twisted into a knot. "I—I didn't—!"

"I have spent years trying to make something of you," he hissed. "Do you hear me? _Years_ of feeding, clothing, and housing you. Teaching you self-control, and keeping your mother's filthy little secret. All of that effort, and apparently you still can't help yourself."

Her hands shook. "He's a condescending sycophant. I didn't even think that was possible, but he is."

"Heinrich Marigold is a pathetic, sniveling coward. None of which changes the fact that in four weeks you are going to his office in Atlas and fixing this problem once and for all."

"Maybe I don't want _him_ doing surgery on me!" she burst out.

"Of course," Father said, after a long and terrible pause. "It should be up to you, shouldn't it? I should let you find some nice doctor so that you can be comfortable during the procedure."

Weiss nearly dropped her scroll. "What?"

"Then, he can tell the newspapers all about it. Is that what you want? For the whole world to know you're a bastard? Maybe you don't want your inheritance after all, and you'd feel more at home squatting in the Crater like a gutter pigeon."

"No," she whispered.

"I can't hear you."

Her eyes burned. "No, Father. I'm sorry."

He hung up.

* * *

Weiss stood there for a moment, watching her trembling hands. Then she moved backwards, groping for a chair, and bumped a mug. Lukewarm tea splashed onto her desk, and suddenly she hated that mug more than she'd ever hated anything in her life. She hurled it at the wall, still half full, and watched it shatter with grim satisfaction.

It was short-lived. She heard the sound of running feet, and then her teammates burst in through the door. Ruby stumbled over the threshold and yelped as broken glass crunched under her boots. "Weiss! Are you okay?"

"Fine." She lay on her stomach in her bed, shoving one of the pillows under her front. "Let's get this over with."

"Are you sure?" asked Blake tentatively, as Yang knelt down and scooped the glass shards into the trash. "We don't have to do this today."

"I know."

"And we are gonna have to touch you kind of a lot," Ruby added.

"I know."

Yang finished cleaning up the mess and stood. "If you're ever uncomfortable, we can always stop, or take a break, or—"

"I _know!"_ Weiss took a deep breath. "Just... stop talking."

She'd be lying if she said she didn't _slightly_ regret deciding to do this yesterday, especially when Ruby produced two pairs of tweezers. But if she backed down now, she knew she'd break more than a stupid mug. So she gritted her teeth until they ached and said nothing. It was decided—among the other three, because Weiss was too angry to have an opinion—that Blake and Yang would do the actual work of getting rid of the badly grown feathers, while Ruby acted as a distraction.

So they settled in, Blake on one side of her and Yang on the other, while Ruby sat cross-legged in front of her with her back to the headboard. There was objectively not enough room on her bed for this arrangement. Blake had to perch precariously by Weiss' hip and lean over her to avoid touching her injury. Yang's body temperature was, as usual, making it completely impossible to ignore how much of her leg was pressed against her side. Ruby was more or less fine—because Weiss could let her feet dangle off the edge to give her partner more space, and _not_ because she was short, thank you very much.

"Is this okay?" Ruby asked.

_Ugh._ They were going to be like this the entire time, weren't they?

"Fine." And if a bit of Blake's hair kept brushing her shoulder, and she could feel Yang's breath on her back, and some combination of those things made it feel like her spine was trying to crawl out of her body, well. She was handling it.

Blake held her hand out. "Ready?"

Weiss nodded, bracing herself for the sickening feeling of someone else touching her wings... but it never came. It didn't feel like much at all, at first. She might not have realized Blake had started, if her head wasn't turned that way so she could see it. Her touch was cool, barely perceptible with her damaged nerves. But then she found a feather and _tugged,_ and Weiss flinched. She'd sort of assumed she wouldn't be able to feel that, but there was a sharp twinge of pain under her skin. Noticing, Blake gave the base of her wing a reassuring squeeze, with just enough pressure for her to sense it. Her breath caught.

There was no time to recover. Yang, following Blake's lead, gently ran a hand down her other wing. And _that,_ Weiss could feel. Her fingers left a trail of heat in their wake as she started on the ingrown feathers.

Seeing her wince, Ruby took her hand and started talking about nothing in particular. First it was chatter about the upcoming Vytal Festival, then it was gushing about her dog—"Maybe dad will let me and Yang bring him to Beacon for a few days after the break, because you _have_ to meet him!" Then she started on a tangent about some upgrade to Crescent Rose.

It still hurt, but somehow the rush of words and the warmth and pressure of their hands took away some of the sting. She wasn't reminded of Doctor Marigold at all—it was more like when she was a child, still too young to wrap her own wings, and Klein had done it for her. Back when they still had feeling. It was easier with him than anyone else, but she still hadn't liked him paying attention to them. She could never get past the fear that she'd turn around at just the wrong moment and catch a flash of disgust on his face.

There was no need to turn around now. She was on her stomach with her head tilted to one side, looking almost directly up at Blake's face. She could watch the slight furrow in her brow as she concentrated, the way her ears flicked every time a lock of hair drifted in front of her face and she had to brush it away. And every so often she would pause, glancing down so that their eyes met, and smile.

Where was Weiss supposed to _look?_ Blake was right there, and she knew she was staring, but there was nothing else except a blank wall and a bit of window for her to focus on. She tried closing her eyes, and all of a sudden she was remembering the first time she'd seen Blake's ears. Bathed in soft lamplight, hands on her back, all tangled up in—

Her eyes shot open. At that exact moment, Blake glanced down to check on her, giving her wing another squeeze. With the arm that she'd dislocated and risked breaking to protect it. And all the annoying speeches, all the times they'd snapped at one another, all the frustration of knowing her, it all came down to that. She just cared _that_ much. About her ideals, about the faunus, and maybe even about...

Oh no.

Weiss wrenched her gaze away from Blake and turned her head. "Everything okay?" Yang asked. And as she spoke she put a hand on Weiss' back, right between her wings, soft and gentle and almost unbearably warm. Checking in to make sure she wasn't pushing too hard. She always did that, always asked, she was the only one who'd ever just _asked_ what Weiss wanted and actually let her answer...

_Oh, no._

She buried her face in the pillow, hoping that would help. It did not. She just kept remembering the scene under the lamppost on repeat, wondering what it would feel like to be one of—except _no,_ she was _not_ doing that, because they were both in a relationship with _each other_ and there was something seriously wrong with her.

"Weiss?" Ruby patted her hand, drawing her attention away from her teammates. Her teammates that were very pretty and much too close.

"Fine," she mumbled.

"Um, okay. I think we can take a break now, though. Maybe switch to the massage part?"

Weiss nodded. Then she made the mistake of glancing over at where Blake and Yang were sweeping the old feathers into a trash bag. Bile rose in the back of her throat as she looked at the nasty, shriveled little things. "How are we getting rid of them?" She should have thought of this _before,_ how could she have just—

"Yang and I were just gonna take them home to Patch and toss them in the woods," said Ruby. "Even if someone finds them, they won't know it has anything to do with you. It's not that weird to find random feathers out there."

"Oh. Right. Good."

"Are you sure you're okay?"

And fine, maybe Weiss was... _feeling things_ that weren't exactly ideal, and maybe the thought of lying down with both of them pressed close like that again was a little bit terrifying, but—

But actually, that was a very good point. She didn't need to do this now. She didn't need to do this at all. Who did she think she was kidding, anyway? Plucking herself like a chicken and getting a massage wasn't going to change anything. All those feathers were disgusting, and here she was asking Blake and Yang to pick them out and stare at her misshapen wings and _touch_ them, as if she wanted to make sure they could never look at her the way they looked at each other.

"I'm fine," she lied. Because this was torturous and humiliating and probably a terrible mistake, and she wanted it to keep making it just a little bit longer.

Hands slid underneath each of her wings, holding them steady and stretching them gently outward. Weiss sucked in a breath, and her grip on Ruby's hands turned crushing. "Slow down a bit," her partner said.

"No," she gritted out. "Keep going."

"Are you—"

"Yes."

Structurally, her wings weren't much different from a second set of arms—and both were being lifted, gently rolling the shoulders back and forth. Sharp pain flared in the joints. Yang adjusted her grip to cradle the right wing in one arm. With her other hand she kneaded the muscles in Weiss' back and the shoulder of her wing. On the other side, Blake mirrored her. Her thumb dug into points of tension until they gave way, leaving behind a warm, leaden ache.

"Do you need a break?" Ruby asked.

Weiss shook her head. She couldn't tear her eyes away from Blake—she was leaning forward now, to get a better angle, muscles standing out in her arms as she pressed down. Then Yang rested her knee on her lower back, so that she could brace Weiss' wing against it for leverage. She felt the touch on her wing only as a vague prickling, but the heat of it came through so vividly that she felt warm all over.

Her only warning was a sudden spike of pain. Blake kept up the pressure on her 'shoulder', slowly but steadily forcing it to bend. Until, with a sickening _pop,_ it gave way. Weiss buried her face in her elbow to muffle a groan.

"Are you okay?" Blake asked anxiously. "I didn't push too far, did I?"

She shook her head. And Blake was still _right in front of her,_ staring at her wing with that laser-focus—and something else, a softness that seemed inappropriate. How could anyone look at _that_ so tenderly?

"Should I try to do the same over here?" Yang wondered.

Weiss nodded, but that side did not cooperate. It wound tighter and tighter, and she kept mumbling, "A little further," until Yang shook her head and let go.

"Sorry," she said. "I don't want to pull something." And then, thoughtlessly, she reached down to tuck a lock of hair behind Weiss' ear.

Warmth bloomed in the pit of her stomach. A fluttering that only got worse when Yang moved down to the 'elbow' of her wing, tracing gentle patterns over the skin as she went. Ones Weiss might not have felt at all if her hands weren't so absurdly _hot._

All of a sudden, there were too many sensations happening at once. The curve of Blake's neck as she tilted her head tangled up in the heat of Yang's touch, the sharp ache in her wings as they stretched, Ruby's hands gently holding hers. The smell of them all surrounding her. It caught her like a tide, and she felt like she was falling—except nothing like that, because this scared her the way a sheer cliff never could.

She caught herself staring at Blake's mouth, pursed slightly in concentration. So she turned her head, and there was Yang, gently bending the 'wrist' back and forth, looking at that hideous twisted thing as if it were a delicate flower she had cupped in her hands.

_Too much._

Weiss squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face in the pillow in front of her. Sensing her distress, Blake pressed in close and touched her shoulder. "We've got you," she promised, and reached up to stroke her hair.

"That's it." Yang's free hand rested on the center of her back, rubbing soothing circles between her wings. She kept going, heat radiating from her hands wherever they touched her. It sank under her skin to settle in the hollows of her bones. Weiss started to shake.

Ruby still had her hands. She held them tight and murmured, "You're doing great." And because it was Ruby, once she started talking she didn't stop. She kept up a steady stream of reassurance, until Weiss' whole body trembled like a pane of glass about to shatter.

"We love you," struck like a hammer blow. It came from three sides, impossible to deflect. Her breath hitched and heaved into a sob.

"Weiss!" Ruby clutched her hands. "Are you okay? Are we hurting you?"

She shook her head.

"We'll give you a minute—or maybe we should just try again tomorrow?"

Ruby made to draw away, and Weiss surprised no one more than herself when she grabbed her wrist with a desperate clinging strength. Because somehow too much had become not enough, _not enough._ A cold pit opened up inside her, threatening to swallow her whole if they stopped touching her. She couldn't speak, had no idea what she'd say if she could, but it seemed like somehow she'd made herself understood.

"Easy." Both of Yang's hands landed on her back, burning fingerprints into her skin. Blake gave up trying to stretch her wings and held her close instead, leaning in so she could press her forehead against Weiss' shoulder. She buried her face in her arms in a hopeless attempt to hide her tears.

"We're so proud of you," Ruby told her.

As with the joint in her wing—she felt something stretch to the breaking point and then beyond. In its wake there was exhaustion, and a wonderful aching relief. Weiss slumped, too spent to think about anything at all. Able only to lie there, hearing and feeling it all, breathing in their scents and surrendering to hunger.


	15. Coffee

Getting Yang and Ruby to leave the next morning like they'd planned was an ordeal.

"You're sure you don't want us to stay?" Ruby asked for the fifth time, dancing from foot to foot like a reluctant puppy. "Dad won't mind too much, he's gonna watch us during the Festival and then we'll be back for like a month!"  
  


"Ruby." Weiss extricated herself from their fourth goodbye hug. "I'll be fine, stop fussing."

"We're just saying!" Yang adjusted the suitcase she had slung over one shoulder. "You can call us whenever, okay? Oh, and don't forget to take your antibiotics—!"

"Ugh." Weiss shoved her bodily towards the door. "Go. Home. You. Sweet. Idiots!"

They went, though not before Yang ruffled Weiss' hair and gave Blake a quick kiss. And if that series of events put Weiss in something of a bad mood, well, she was determined not to let Blake notice.

The rest of the day was... quiet. Blake mostly spent it reading cross-legged on her bed, and occasionally going out to get food from the dining hall. Weiss was doing her best not to bind her wings for the day, to give them a bit of a rest while she had the chance, and that meant staying in the room. With nothing to distract her, since classes were over and there was no homework to be done.

So Weiss busied herself by rereading bits of their textbooks at random. Every time Blake got up to leave the room she would squeeze her shoulder as she passed, and every time Weiss hid her flinch. She wasn't really in the mood for casual physical contact, but she didn't want to react too negatively and lose it for good.

She kept sneaking glances—unable, as usual, to suppress her baser instincts. Except that it was much worse now that she knew what she was doing, and why. She had absolutely no business looking at Yang's girlfriend like that. This feeling had to go away. It _would_ go away. Because as much as it galled her to admit it, she needed these people. She could not and would not let her stupid impulsive bird brain drive them away.

Her eyes flicked to the side, and met Blake's.

Weiss looked hastily away, cursing herself. "Hey," Blake said softly. "It's okay. Whenever you're ready."

That was when she remembered that Blake was expecting to talk. Had, in fact, foregone a pleasant break in Patch with the Xiao Longs in order to talk, because Weiss had wanted her to. "Now is fine," she said, even though she was not remotely ready.

Blake set her book aside. She studied Weiss' expression for a moment, then, "How about some tea, first?"

Weiss tried not to let out an audible sigh of relief. "Coffee?" she said hopefully.

"Sure." Blake made a face. "Blasphemer."

The time it took for Blake to walk to the cafeteria and back gave Weiss a precious few minutes to steady her nerves. She wasn't even sure why she was so anxious—but she retrieved the pieced-together pages of Doctor Polendina's notes and smoothed them out on her desk. That felt a little better. After further consideration, she also took out an empty notebook and pencil, arranging them on her left side so that she could take notes.

Blake returned. Handing Weiss one steaming cup, she perched on her bed with the other. She shot a bemused glance at the notebook, then said, "So... what do you want to talk about?"

"I was hoping you would know that."

"Right." Blake's ears twitched as she thought. "Well, what did you most want to ask someone, growing up? That your parents just wouldn't know?"

Her throat tightened. "Is it possible for two humans to have a faunus child?" She hugged her arms around her stomach. "I know it's not supposed to be, but I thought maybe... maybe you'd know about exceptions?"

Slowly, Blake shook her head. "Sorry. I've never heard of anything like that happening." Then, hastily, "Before you, I mean."

Weiss rolled her eyes. "Oh, spare me. You're hardly the first person to assume I'm a bastard."

Blake winced.

"My sister thinks our mother must have cheated," Weiss went on. "She denies it, of course, and I do look a lot like him so I suppose she might be telling the truth. I'm her daughter, though. My semblance proves that much."

"Would it be so bad not to be related to him?" Blake asked hesitantly.

She shrugged. "He doesn't think I am, so I guess it wouldn't change anything."

"He told you that?" Blake's ears pinned back in anger.

"No. My mother did."

"What about you?" Blake asked, after a long moment.

"Hm?"

"You told me what your sister and your parents think. What about you?"

"I..." Weiss swallowed. "I looked into it. Not a lot, I didn't want anyone to notice, but I looked for bird faunus in Solitas. There aren't any."

"It's rare," Blake agreed. "Even in Menagerie."

"Of course, maybe there _was_ one and my Father found out, but I don't think so. If he had proof my mother had been with someone else, he would have done something about it."

"Hm." Blake's brow furrowed, as if she were deep in thought.

"What?"

"Well... he wouldn't _have_ to be a bird faunus."

Weiss stared at her. "Excuse me, _what?"_

"When two faunus with the same trait have a child, that child inherits their trait." Blake gestured to herself. "When they have different traits, the child will get one or the other. But with a human... they might get the faunus parent's trait, but they might also get something random."

"Wha—random? Why? _How?"_

Blake spread her hands helplessly. "I don't know. Half the scientific community is still convinced I have a heat cycle, there isn't much good research."

Weiss took a moment to digest that. "So my Father might be..." Her stomach twisted. "That still doesn't explain why I look like him. I look more like him than Whitley does! That doesn't make any _sense_ if we're not even related!"

She paused. Realized suddenly that she was out of breath, and Blake looked alarmed.

"Never mind," she muttered. "It doesn't matter."

"Of course it does." Blake mustered up a small smile. "I'm not going to pretend I understand your relationship with him. But if it's important to you, then it matters."

Weiss looked away. "Why are you all _like this,"_ she groaned.

"Like what?" Blake sounded slightly offended. Maybe that was why Weiss' reply came out so much more honest than she'd intended.

"Kind."

"Oh."

"You can't talk to me like this all the time." She was aware, distantly, that she was talking too fast and too loud. "You can't just _do_ all these things when I don't—" Her shoulders slumped. "I can't do that. I can't give it back."

She wished she hadn't said anything. Now, she was sure, Blake was going to argue with her. Was going to be _kind_ again. Or worse, she'd finally realize the obvious and—

"I feel like that too, sometimes."

Weiss goggled at her. "You... what?"

Blake tried for a smile, and grimaced instead. "I worry about Yang and I. She's wonderful in so many ways... ways I still don't really think I deserve."

_"What?_ But you're—" Weiss choked on whatever she was about to say. Because she didn't know how to articulate it, and had the acute sense that she shouldn't try, in case she revealed too much.

"I've got a lot of my own baggage." Blake shrugged, attempting nonchalance even as her expression turned pained. "The point is, I do my best to support her the way she supports me, even if my best isn't as good. Because that's all I can do. Because... sometimes you can't help other people until you get some help yourself."

Blake took a deep breath, and grinned at her. "We're not being kind because we want something, Weiss. It's because we care about you. You don't owe us anything for it, and you're still worth helping, even if you can't pay it forward right now. Honestly? Just seeing how much better you're doing, compared to the beginning of the year, or even a week ago...it's been really inspiring."

Weiss wiped her eyes on her sleeve. "Kind, _again,"_ she grumbled—and failed to hide a smile.

* * *

By the next day, Weiss was starting to get cabin fever. She put on the bindings for a few minutes at a time, to walk with Blake around Beacon and get her own meals in the cafeteria. Which was... awkward. Jaune and Pyrrha had both gone home for the break, too, so the only people she knew on campus were Sun and Neptune, and... well. People she'd shouted at.

They passed Ren and Nora in the hall that afternoon. Ren gave them the same polite nod he always did—but Nora's eyes narrowed.

"Hey," she said. "You're obviously going through some stuff, and I hope you feel better. But don't take it out on my friends again. Got it?"

"Nora." Ren put a hand on her shoulder. "That's—"

"Fair." Weiss looked down. "It's... fair."

He frowned. "The error was mine in the first place," he pointed out. "I should have remembered your boundaries. Besides, there was no harm done. It was just a plate."

"But—" Weiss and Nora started to protest, at almost the same time. Nora blinked at her, startled.

"I was angry." Weiss still couldn't quite meet their eyes. "Not at you, but... I wasn't feeling like myself."

"That's still not an apology," Nora pointed out, and Blake winced.

_"Nora."_  
  
Nora gave Ren a sweet smile. "Oh, we'll give her one, too! I know we accidentally tripped over some... stuff." She looked squarely at Weiss. "We all have stuff, though. You weren't trying to hurt us, but we weren't trying to hurt you, either."

"Good," Weiss said. "Then I see no reason why we have to humiliate each other to illustrate the point."

Nora stared at her.

Ren stared at her.

Blake _stared_ at her.

"What?" Weiss folded her arms defensively across her chest.

"Is... that what you think apologies are?" Nora shot her a sideways look that came uncomfortably close to pity.

"Am I wrong?"

"Uh, _yeah?"_  
  


"An apology really isn't necessary," Ren insisted, giving Nora a look. "Since that was what _we_ were doing in the first place, remember?"

"Ugh, fine! You and Pyrrha are way too nice." Nora waved a hand at Weiss. "Obviously there's more _stuff_ happening here, so just don't push Ren again or I'll beat you up. 'Kay?"

"That sounds acceptable."

"And since I didn't get to this part last time..." Her expression turned alarmingly serious. "I'm really, really sorry about before. I don't know you super well, so I shouldn't have guessed about what was happening with you and your team. If you ever need something smashed, let me know!" And then, with a parting grin, she and Ren were off.

Weiss stood there for a moment, struggling to process what had just happened. Then Blake stepped up beside her, silently offering her a hand. She took it.

"You do a lot of apologizing at home, don't you?"

She looked away and tightened her grip.

* * *

That evening, Weiss was partway through reviewing a chapter of Intermediate Dust Mechanics when Blake cleared her throat. She glanced over her shoulder, trying not to dwell too much on the image of her teammate curled up on her side in her pajamas. "What?"

"It's getting kind of late. Do you... maybe want to relax a bit?"

"I am relaxing."

Blake gave her a flat stare.

"It's _relaxing_ to be able to look at the material without worrying about being tested," Weiss said defensively.

"Is that what you usually do in your free time?" asked Blake. "Study?"

"I like to stay productive. It's not like I can just forget about an exam until it's right in front of me and pass with flying colors." She still hadn't forgiven Yang for that, and probably wouldn't until the day she died.

The corner of Blake's mouth twitched upward. "She _does_ study, you know. It's just that she mostly does it as she goes through the homework."

"Must be nice," Weiss said coldly, "being so naturally gifted."

It took a moment for the shock on Blake's face to sink in. Once it did, she turned back around and glared blankly at her textbook. "I'm... I didn't mean that. I'm just..." Jealous. Again.

"You're doing better than she is, you know," Blake said quietly. "Than all of us, except maybe Pyrrha. And, well... Pyrrha."

"I wouldn't if either of you actually bothered to try."

"We are trying, Weiss," Blake said, gently but firmly. "Maybe it's hard for me to get stressed out about tests when I've spent years on the run from the law, but this is the first time I've been in a formal school. I'm honestly happy I'm keeping up with the material at all."

Weiss cringed. "You're right. That wasn't fair."

"That's not what I meant. I'm saying you're not the only one who struggles with classes. It's not a fluke that you're at the top of the class. You're there because you're driven, and because you're brilliant." Weiss felt her face heat up, and very deliberately turned her attention to a diagram of a burn Dust crystal.

Blake was quiet for a while. Except, occasionally, for the flicking of pages. Then, completely unprompted, she asked, "Do you want to read with me?"

"What?"

"Well, we don't have any assignments right now. It's the best time we're ever going to have to relax. So, if you want... I could pick a book and read it out loud."

"You do know that I'm almost eighteen, right?"

Blake shrugged, but the way she fidgeted with the book in her hands revealed how tense she was. "It's something I do with Yang."

"You... read to Yang."

She flushed. "Other way around, actually. She does voices for all the characters and everything." A soft smile crept across her face. "It's no wonder Ruby loves fairy tales so much."

Weiss struggled to ignore the twisting feeling in her gut. As the seconds stretched, Blake reached out and patted the space beside her. She should definitely stay at her desk... but she couldn't quite bring herself to say as much. So she settled in, just far enough away from Blake that their knees weren't quite touching.

"Do you like fantasy?" Blake asked. She started to reach for the bookshelf, but Weiss waved her hands.

"I don't want to interrupt you," she said hastily. "You can just keep going, I don't mind."

"Um." Blake's ears got twitchy, and she glanced apprehensively at the book in her hands. "Sure. Okay." She cleared her throat, took a deep breath, and began.

Weiss didn't read fiction. She was jumping into the middle of a story she knew literally nothing about, full of characters whose names she kept getting confused. And, within minutes, she was enthralled.

It had to be something about Blake's voice. Calm and melodic, it drew her in so gently she didn't even realize she'd started moving closer until their legs were pressed together. And when she did... well, she hadn't said anything, right? Did that mean this was okay?

She couldn't worry about it. She found herself swept along in the emotions of the story, all her focus drawing in until she realized something... odd. Blake was _skipping_ things. It wasn't obvious, but sometimes she would pause for a moment, and when she picked up again the characters would be in a slightly different place. She might have ignored it, but the further they got into the book, the more often it happened.

"Why aren't you reading all of it?" she demanded, and leaned in to see.

Blake's ears jerked up. "Weiss, wait—!"

She read one of the missing sentences. Her face went very red. "Oh," she said, a bit faintly.

"Yeah..."

"Oh."

"Sorry." Blake grinned sheepishly at her. "I thought it would be less awkward to just..."

"Yes," Weiss said hastily, seizing on the lifeline Blake had tossed her. "Much."

  
Which didn't really make any sense, but Blake just chuckled and picked up where she'd left off, carefully skirting around the sorts of passages that might be slightly, mildly, _extremely_ inappropriate to read to someone curled up next to her who was very much not her girlfriend.

Weiss tried to settle back into the story as if nothing had happened, but she couldn't stop fixating on how close they were. On the place where their shoulders were touching. What had felt wonderful only a moment ago, well... it was still wonderful, but now the feeling was tangled up in panic and guilt. She was caught between conflicting impulses. She wanted to jump away, but she also wanted to lean closer and—

She jumped away. "I—I didn't," she stammered, her stomach tying itself in knots as she tried to explain herself. What if Blake thought she didn't want to be touched anymore? What if she told Yang and Ruby?

"Hey." Blake shot her a reassuring smile. "It's okay, you can be as close or as far away as you want. Whatever makes you more comfortable."

"I didn't hate it. I just..."

"Needed a break?"

She nodded, and tried to conceal the depth of her relief. Blake started reading again, and Weiss curled up at the end of her bed, letting her voice lull her back into the story. Allowing herself a tiny sigh as she relaxed into her friend's presence, forgetting all about the weight of her bare wings on her back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To clarify: I don't want to kinkshame the heat cycle trope or anything—I'm just not using it here, and in a world where she didn't have one I think Blake would be kinda annoyed by humans assuming she did.
> 
> also, i have done... so much math today. my brain... is mush :(


	16. Interlude — Tea

Blake wondered, sometimes, what that fierce and self-assured kid who ran off with the White Fang would think of her now. Sometimes it hurt to think about. And sometimes, like now, it made her want to laugh. Here she was, sitting in her dorm in the most prestigious combat school in Vale, possibly all of Remnant, handing a well-worn copy of Ninjas of Love to Weiss Schnee in the hope that it might help her feel a little bit better about her wings.

It wasn't exactly free of questionable content, but it was one of the best stories she'd ever found that had a faunus hero. Which was why it was also the only book she'd ever forgiven for having a cat faunus dominatrix in it. And _that_ really was the cherry on top of the whole bizarre situation, wasn't it? She just accidentally got Weiss of all people into smut.

Sort of. Not _really._ Weiss said she was skimming over those parts. For the sake of her own sanity, Blake chose to believe her.

It turned out that Weiss had no idea how to relax. She approached reading for pleasure with exactly the same intensity she normally brought to her textbooks, and devoured the entire first novel in one five-hour sitting. All of a sudden, Blake was tangled up in an in-depth conversation about ivy motifs, and obscure pieces of worldbuilding, and the symbolism of the characters' weapons. She wasn't sure whether to be baffled or delighted.

Then Weiss went off on a long and meandering tangent about what might have happened if Shori hadn't died. "I wish I could read that," Blake said casually. "It sounds brilliant." The effect on Weiss was immediate—her ears turned bright red, and she turned her head a little too late to hide a small, hesitant smile.

_Delighted,_ Blake decided. _Definitely._

If it was a little heartbreaking how quickly Weiss melted under the slightest praise or affectionate touch, Blake tried not to dwell on it. Instead, she focused on coaxing out one genuine smile after another. Each one, it seemed to her, was just a tiny bit wider.

Part of Blake was reluctant to leave the room at all. She hated to make Weiss wear the bindings again when she didn't absolutely need to, but it wasn't fair to confine her to their dorm either. And, eventually, she got fed up of staying in one place.

"Coffee," Weiss said, slamming her hand down on her desk. "In Vale. Please. I need to get out of here."

Blake tapped her chin, pretending to think.

"Fine!" Weiss rolled her eyes. "Coffee and _tea._ Heretic."

They walked into Vale, slipping into the now-familiar rhythm of conversation. It wasn't always about "faunus stuff," as Yang had put it—sometimes they talked about books, or Blake tried to coax some other hobbies out of her. This time, though, Weiss had a question that was at least a decade overdue.

"Do people ever call you things? Like... pet names, I suppose."

"Does street harassment count?"

"No." Weiss toyed with her sleeve. "More positively."

Blake wracked her brain for a moment. "I guess... my parents used to call me their cub. I hated it when I was a kid. Not because of the faunus connection, it just made it hard to feel like one of the grown-ups."

Weiss snorted. "Of course you were the precocious type."

"And you weren't?"

"I don't know. I never really felt like a child, except..." Weiss' expression grew distant. "My grandfather used to call me engel. Angel, in an old Mantle dialect. He was human, so maybe he wasn't supposed to, but..."

"I couldn't say." Blake shrugged helplessly. "I never met him, so you're a much better judge of how he meant it."

"I don't know how to feel about him," Weiss admitted. "He interfered, when I was a baby and Father wanted to correct the issue."

Blake's opinion of Weiss' grandfather rose dramatically.

"Technically it's his fault I've been stuck in between like this, but I doubt that was intentional. He died before I was old enough to bind my wings, so I don't think he realized what hiding them would actually entail. I liked the name, though. Winter hardly ever talks about what I am, and Whitley doesn't know."

"Do you miss it? The nickname?" Blake wasn't a huge fan of them—the animal-themed ones always came from the skeeviest humans, and most of the others she could remember carried only bad memories. _Darling. His little shadow. My love._ But that, at least, was baggage Weiss probably didn't have.

Weiss frowned. "Why?"

"I guess I was wondering how you'd feel about us using it. The three of us, I mean."

"Oh." She paused, considering it. "It would be strange, I think."

"Right." And suddenly, Blake remembered the _other_ nickname Weiss had in their group of friends. "I guess Neptune gets a pass?" she teased.

Weiss turned scarlet. "It wasn't like that," she grumbled.  
  


"Sorry—"

"Don't be. I thought it was, too." Weiss turned so that she was looking anywhere but at Blake. "I liked the name, but that's all."

Blake wasn't sure how to respond to that, and she didn't get the chance to figure it out—they'd reached a much busier street that led to a local cafe Blake had taken a liking to. Someone might overhear if they kept talking.

Within minutes each of them had a steaming take-out cup in their hand. Weiss was eyeing the room with some disappointment, noticing that there was nowhere at all for them to talk privately. Blake grinned at her and gestured towards a door near the back. "Follow me."

They made their way upstairs, and came out onto a rooftop scattered with a few tables. "Nobody comes up here this time of year," Blake said.

"What? Why?"

As if in answer, a stiff breeze picked up. Vale's roads were mostly a patchwork, meandering tangle, but this particular street cut an arrow-straight path all the way to the docks—and also happened to be at the exact wrong angle to catch the winds that blew in from the sea. In summertime, the place had been bustling. Now, with an early-autumn chill in the air...

The wind reached a peak, screaming past them with such force that a potted plant sitting on one corner of the roof tipped over. Weiss went stiff.

_Stupid,_ Blake snarled at herself. _This is an awful place to talk, why would you ever—_

And then, Weiss laughed. The sound startled both of them, ringing out as clear and bright as a silver bell over the howling wind. The air smelled faintly of brine, not the fishy scent of the docks but something deeper and wilder, swept in from far beyond the shore. She threw her arms out as if to catch it, dancing backwards until she was balanced on a low wall right at the edge of the roof.

"Weiss—" Blake blurted, reaching out as her teammate swayed back and forth.

"Oh, please! Ozpin threw us off a cliff our first day at Beacon, this is barely fifteen feet." Weiss did hop down, though, and made a futile attempt to push her hair out of her face. Quite a lot of it had escaped her ponytail and utterly refused to be tamed.

There was something to her then, all ruffled and askew as she leaned into the wind. A spark in her eyes that Blake wanted to draw out of her again and again, over and over, as many times as it took for it to stay there.

"Um." Weiss fussed with her hair again. "Should we... sit?"

Blake realized she was staring, and shook herself. "Right, sorry." Her chest hurt, as though something inside had swelled too big and too fast. "It's just nice seeing you so happy." She fidgeted with her mug, swirling the tea around and around.

"Oh." Weiss sat down, clutching her coffee against her chest. "I suppose I am. Happy, I mean."

"That's good." Blake's mouth was dry. She swallowed, hard. "Really good."

Weiss waved her off, flashing a strained smile. "Yes, well, I suppose it helps your case a little. I'm still far from convinced, though."

"What?" Blake reached out to cover one of her hands with her own. "Weiss, no! I know I was pushy about that before, and... honestly, I don't think I can let it go. Even imagining how I'd feel if that happened to me makes me sick."

Weiss sighed. "Blake..."

"But I know that's not what you need right now." Blake squeezed her hand, and smiled softly when she squeezed back. "I know it does more harm than good when I try to force you to do what I think is right. I'm trying really hard to back off, but if you think I only care about that one part of you, then obviously I haven't tried hard enough. You're so much more than that, Weiss."

"Don't."

"It's true," Blake insisted. "You're brave, and you're strong, and you're kind when you think no one is looking. You spent your whole life living in fear that someone would find out your secret, and then you told Goodwitch to protect your friends. No matter how much you're struggling, you're still someone I'm thankful that I got to meet."

She heard Weiss' breath catch in her throat. Then she spoke, so quietly that Blake would have had no hope of hearing her if it weren't for her ears. "Do you have any idea what you've all done to me?" She pulled her hands away. "You keep making me want things I can't have. How will I go back to the way things are _supposed_ to be after all this?"

Blake wrestled down the surge of anger, because she knew Weiss would think it was aimed at her. "Don't," she said simply. "You deserve better."

Weiss made a wounded noise in the back of her throat. And then, before Blake could try to apologize, she threw herself across the table and wrapped her arms around her.

For a moment Blake floundered, too stunned by Weiss actually _initiating_ a hug to know what to do. Then she let her palms rest flat against her back, feeling the bony curve of her wings through layers of fabric. For a second she panicked, thinking that Weiss would jump away the moment she felt it—but she only grabbed a fistful of the back of her shirt.

Blake could feel her heartbeat. There was something almost warlike in it, the wild pounding drum of a Weiss that laughed into the wind and perched on cliff edges. A Weiss her father had been trying to kill for seventeen years. A Weiss that was hidden, buried, and very much alive. In that moment, all she wanted was to pull at this thread, to warp the world around them until it was a place where that Weiss could walk openly and know exactly how much she was worth.

Realization bloomed beneath her ribs. A curl of warmth that froze and cracked and splintered inside her, as she finally realized what she'd been thinking. What she'd been _feeling._ Her body went rigid, and Weiss pulled away as if burned.

"Um," she said.

Blake tucked her hands into her pockets, so that Weiss wouldn't see her dig her nails into her palms. "Sorry. I'm getting a bit cold."

"Right."

The trip back to Beacon was about twenty-five minutes. So that was how much time Blake gave herself to scour away these feelings that were the last thing she wanted, the last thing Weiss needed, and the absolute last thing that Yang deserved. It wasn't enough.

She tried to bury herself in a book in the last hours before the sisters returned—except that she could hear pages turning on the other side of the room, and she kept stumbling over little details that reminded her of Weiss picking them apart with laser-focused precision. Because she'd been stupid enough to get all _this_ tangled up in the one thing that could reliably distract her.

No. That wasn't fair. Weiss needed something she could do to relax, and it was a good thing she'd taken to books this well. This was a good thing, and if Blake was going to freak out about it then that was _her_ problem and it was going to _stay_ that way.

The door unlocked with a sharp click that made Blake jump. Her stomach twisted into a hard knot as Ruby charged in first. Would she not feel the same anymore? Was she really that shallow?

Then Yang walked in wearing a wide, crooked grin, and Blake melted. She was on her feet before she realized what she was doing. Familiar arms wrapped around her, and she felt more than heard the Yang's chuckle. "Hello to you too."

"I missed you," she said, and it was not a lie. Her world was not crumbling apart. The past few hours had been a blip, that was all, and everything was back the way it was supposed to be.

Until she pulled away, and she noticed Weiss looking. She had the third Ninjas of Love book tucked halfway under her pillow to hide the cover, saving her place with her pinky, and it looked like she was almost to the halfway point. She was going to lose her mind when they opened the Last Sanctuary, and Blake wanted to be there when she did.

For an instant, there was so much affection welling up in her chest that it left no room for anything else—so much that she couldn't make heads or tails of who it was for. She tried to unravel it, and was left with only a sickening knot of guilt in the pit of her stomach.

This was too much. She stayed still for as long as she could, pretending to read on her bunk until she finally felt it was safe to slip away. Once she was out of sight she wandered all the way up to the roof, hoping the bite of the night air would settle her. It only reminded her of the way Weiss had lit up with the wind whipping through her hair.

She sat down heavily by the edge of the roof and put her head in her hands. "What is _wrong_ with you?"

"Um..."

Blake jumped and whirled around. "Oh, no!" she blurted, when she saw Yang in the doorway. "I didn't mean you!"

"I know." Yang plopped down next to her and tried for a smile, but it soon faded into concern. "I haven't heard you that angry in a while."

"I'm okay. Really."

Yang looked at Blake, with one eyebrow slightly raised. Waiting patiently for her to crack.

It didn't take long. Blake hugged herself around the middle, staring fixedly at her lap. An arm wrapped around her shoulders, drawing her in close. She buried her face in the crook of Yang's neck, savoring the warmth of her, and for a moment the closeness blotted out everything else.

Just for a moment. Before Blake remembered who she was taking comfort from, and why, and pulled away.

"Hey... what's wrong?"

She was so lucky she'd found someone, _anyone_ willing to put up with her—let alone someone like Yang. Someone who had real strength, the kind that embraced vulnerability rather than hiding it away. Who threw herself so fully into loving other people that sometimes, through sheer force of will, she could even convince them that they deserved it. Who had strong opinions about the Achieve Men that Blake still didn't understand, and a splash of freckles across her nose, and a habit of making the worst jokes imaginable with such earnest delight that it was somehow charming.

_But nothing is ever enough for you, is it?_

A soft hand closed over hers. "Did something happen with Weiss?"

She felt sick. "She didn't do anything wrong. I'm..." Her throat closed up, her insides twisting into hot, guilty knots. "I'm sorry," she choked out.

"What?" Yang shifted so that she was looking at Blake head-on. "What happened? Did you guys get in another fight?"

Blake shook her head. "No," she insisted. "It's not her fault, I just—I can't make it stop, I know I'm not supposed to feel like this—" She clamped her mouth shut so quickly she almost bit her tongue, but it was too late. Her own words hung in the air. She couldn't take them back.

Yang stared blankly at her for a second. Then there was a flicker of something in her eyes that she quickly blinked away. "Wait. Did... did you two...?"

"No!" Blake clenched her hands together. "Gods, no. I don't want that, I'm trying to make it go _away._ I want to be with you, I'd never forgive myself if I—!" She hissed, fingernails digging painfully into her palms. Her own breathing sounded harsh in her ears.

"So... you're saying you're attracted to her?"

She stared at her clenched fists, not wanting to see the disgust on Yang's face.

"Hey. Look at me? Please? I need you to listen."

She didn't want to... but didn't she owe her at least that much? So she raised her head, and Yang pressed their foreheads together. Suddenly Blake couldn't see anything except her eyes, shining bright and vibrant in the moonlight.

"That's completely normal."

It felt like accidentally flipping two pages in a book—like she'd skipped to the wrong section and now nothing made sense. "What?"

"C'mon." Yang grinned at her. "Just because we're together now doesn't mean you don't have eyes. Heck, I live with her too. Now that I understand why she's... like that... I get it. She's pretty." Her expression softened. "I'm never going to be mad at you for having feelings, Blake. I promise."

It was a good thing, too, because Blake was brimming over with so many feelings in that moment she couldn't have identified any of them if her life depended on it. The only thing they seemed able to agree on was that she should kiss Yang, right now. So she did.

Her frantic heartbeat slowed. She settled into Yang's side, letting the guilt and frantic dread drain out of her. "I'm sorry," she said again, and Yang made an indignant noise. "Not for that, just—you're right. I know you're right. I shouldn't have overreacted like that." Seeing Blake make a comically big deal out of what was probably a very slight crush couldn't have felt great on Yang's end.

Yang leaned their heads together. "You're okay," she promised. Her arm tightened protectively around her shoulders. "I just... were you... scared of me?"

"Huh?" Blake furrowed her brow, and tried to figure out exactly what she'd been expecting Yang to _do_ with that information. Her stomach twisted. "Not exactly," she said quietly. "I think I was expecting you to be angry." Which didn't sound much like Yang at all. Hurt, maybe—but semblance or no, she was not someone who lashed out at the people she cared about.

Blake's throat got tight all over again. "It would have made more sense for you to yell at me," she admitted. And then, because this was starting to turn into a conversation she did _not_ have the emotional capacity for right now, "That's what would happen in a book, anyway."

Yang pulled her in close and kissed her temple. "Never," she promised.

_I love you._ Now wasn't the time to say it, given how this conversation had started—but she thought it, and she wanted to give a little of it back. "You can tell me how you're feeling, too. Even if it's messy. I—" And here she choked just a little, because there were some things Blake couldn't promise twice, and unconditional trust was one of them. "I don't think you could scare me off if you tried," she said instead, because it was the truth. Her trust could be broken, but she believed with everything she had that Yang would never.

For a moment it seemed like that would be it—they sat together looking at the stars, the silence stretching out between them like a warm blanket. Then, as if picking up a conversation they'd never had, Yang said, "Summer wasn't my first mom."

And she told Blake—about Raven, and about Summer, and about the space they'd left behind. It was cold on the roof, but curled together like this she hardly noticed. She sat there, playing absentmindedly with Yang's hair as she listened.

When she was done, it still wasn't the right time to say it. So Blake leaned into her and said, "I'm glad I picked you in the Emerald Forest."

"You picked me?"

"Mm-hmm." Blake's eyelids were getting heavy with the late hour, and the warmth of Yang's body, and the sense that she could fall asleep right now and be totally, perfectly safe. "Best decision I ever made."


End file.
